


Directions

by Xie



Series: Only Time [7]
Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-18
Updated: 2014-05-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 15:55:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 63,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1654181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xie/pseuds/Xie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After recovering from meningitis, Justin gets a chance to spend a year in London.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Directions, Chapter 1

**Directions, Chapter One**  
By Xie

 _Alice came to the fork in the road.  
"Which road do I take?" she asked.  
"Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat.  
"I don't know," Alice answered.  
"Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."_ – Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

**Brian's POV**

I had Theodore's report. I'd read Theodore's report. I'm sure there was some reason why I now also had to listen to Theodore's report, but since I couldn't even begin to conceive of what it was, I tuned it out. 

I finally heard the note in Theodore's voice that meant he was almost done. I snapped my laptop shut and went over to my desk while everyone filed out, a few of the newer employees glancing nervously over their shoulders at me.

Cynthia was sitting on the sofa, and Ted was still at the conference table. I frowned. This was a bad sign. "What?"

They looked at each other, and then at me. Another bad sign. Very, very bad. 

Ted broke first. "Jennifer Taylor called just before the meeting. Remember that group that wanted to lease the building Babylon is in to build a mini-mall?" He glanced at a paper in his hand. "Excuse me, shopping galleria?"

I grunted.

Ted got up and crossed to the desk. "They're putting together a deal to lease the part of the building you're not using and the buildings on either side of the club."

I stared at him. "Fuck."

He nodded. "You're being flanked."

"And not in any way I'd enjoy." He handed me the paper he was holding, and I skimmed it quickly. 

Cynthia joined us. "Jennifer said she only found out because an agent, who obviously had no idea of the history, approached her about getting access for some preliminary inspections. None of these properties is on the market; the galleria group went to the owners and is trying to put it together quietly."

"When can Jennifer come in?"

Cynthia nodded towards the door. "She's waiting outside."

"Well, go fucking get her."

I'll say this for Justin's mother: she never let her country club manners or essential niceness keep her from going for the jugular in a business deal. She walked out of Kinnetik four hours later with signed offers to buy not only the building Babylon occupied, but the buildings on either side, too. 

Cynthia walked out with Jennifer, and I poured myself a drink before collapsing onto the sofa. Ted was still sitting at the conference table, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Well, that wasn't what I thought we'd be doing this afternoon." He got up and sat in the chair next to the sofa.

"No. I had in mind that we'd be making a million, not spending a million."

He contemplated the sad reality of the situation, and then brightened. "On the other hand, Brian, if Jennifer's right, this is an investment that will not only preserve the edgy queer urban neighborhood you love so much, but make you a very rich man."

"I'm already a very rich man," I pointed out.

He got up and gripped my shoulder briefly. "Cheer up. Maybe they won't sell."

I leaned against the back of the sofa, and closed my eyes. "And Babylon's new next door neighbors will be Pottery Barn and Baby Gap." 

"I'm sure they'd jump at the chance to buy you out." He said it quietly, but not hesitantly.

I opened one eye. "No."

He nodded. And after a few minutes, he went out the door.

It was late when I got home, after 10. I'd seen light from Justin's studio windows, but when I checked it, he wasn't there. 

His latest painting was, though. He'd been working on it for a while, after a few false starts that were presumably buried in Justin's dead painting graveyard somewhere. Apparently almost dying of meningitis hadn't been good for his creativity. Or maybe he was just exhausted; for a few weeks after he got out of the hospital, I'd found him asleep almost every night when I got home. Sometimes he was on the sofa in the media room, the TV on. But mostly he'd be in bed, sketchbook or laptop lying open next to him.

I checked his computer. It was still on, and his music was playing quietly. I turned it off, and the lights, and went upstairs. He wasn't there, so I changed and went back down. The media room was quiet, and I smiled as I headed out to the spa. He smiled back at me, sitting on the edge, his feet floating in the hot water.

"It's finished." I pulled my t-shirt off over my head.

"What did you think?" He didn't sound at all uncertain.

I shrugged and stepped out of my jeans. "It was all right."

He splashed water on me with his foot while I climbed in. I sank down into the hot water, and looked at him across the steamy surface. "I see why you dumped the blue one, though."

He slid back into the water. "You always call my paintings by the name of their colors." I felt his feet tangling with mine. "Why is that?"

I let my head drop back on the edge of the spa. "What should I call them?" 

"Brilliant, astonishing, staggering works of genius."

I lifted my head back up. "I've said every one of those things."

"You have never called one of my paintings a staggering work of genius."

"Blow me."

"You never have."

"No. I mean, blow me."

"Underwater? I'll drown."

"Hold your breath."

"You'd better hope you develop an acute case of premature ejaculation." But he'd slid along the bench, and his hand was wrapping around my cock. 

I took pity on his inadequate respiratory stamina and hoisted myself up to sit on the edge of the spa. I saw him smile. 

**Justin's POV**

Brian was in the shower and I was putting something in the dishwasher when the phone rang. I looked at the caller ID, and answered before it rang again. It was Virginia. She never called this late.

I wasn't any less confused when I hung up the phone. I was still standing there, holding it, when Brian came in, a towel around his waist and his hair wet and spiky. 

I put the phone back on its charger. "That was Virginia."

Brian glanced at the clock on the oven. "What did she want?"

I frowned. "She's going to be in Pittsburgh tomorrow, and she wants to have dinner with us." I looked at him. "Or me, if you have plans."

He shook his head. "That's fine. Did she say why the hell she's going to be in Pittsburgh?"

I laughed. "Maybe your advertising campaign is working."

Brian snorted. "Right. She lives in New York. I think we'd need to have something more than a waterfront restoration and urban renewal program to get her to come to the Pitts."

"I'm going to guess that's not quite how you pitched it to the Pittsburgh Convention and Visitors' Bureau?"

Brian grinned at me, and pulled the refrigerator door open. "Those weren't my exact words, no." He stared inside. "Why don't we have any food?"

"We ate it all, and then didn't buy more." 

He pulled out a plate and sniffed at it suspiciously. "How old do you think this is?"

"It's my leftover dinner, so I think you're safe."

He stuck it in the microwave, and I sat down at the table. "I told her we'd make the reservation." 

"Anywhere in mind?"

I shrugged. "You pick. Wherever you'd take a client to impress them."

The microwave pinged that his dinner was ready, and he sat down to eat. I fought to keep my eyes open; I still ran out of energy after doing half of what I used to do in a normal day. Fucking meningitis.

Brian shoved back his chair, put his plate in the dishwasher, added soap, and pushed the start button. Then he tugged me up. "Let's go to bed so I can fuck you before you fall sleep."

I laughed and leaned against him. "You say the most romantic things."

"I'd pick you up and carry you up the stairs like Scarlett O'Hara, but the last time I tried to just let you lean on me while you walked up you almost bit my head off."

I patted the side of his face. "Admit it, old man. You're not sure you wouldn't drop me halfway up."

Brian locked his arms around my back, pulled my feet off the floor and started walking backwards. "Who are you calling an old man?"

I bit his earlobe. "You."

He let me back down, not particularly gently, but I didn't mind. It was a nice change from being treated like I was going to break, a habit I'd gotten Brian to give up sooner than I had my mom. 

"You were saying something about fucking me?"

He swatted my ass, and we went upstairs. When I came out of the bathroom, he was lying on the bed, naked, his lubed hand slowly moving up and down his cock.

I crawled over his legs, and he opened his eyes when I pulled his hand away. "That's for me."

He just nodded. "It's all yours."

I shifted forward until I was straddling his crotch, and he brought his knees up behind me. I leaned back and settled my ass over his cock, holding it with one hand while Brian held my other hand. I let the head brush against my hole once, and then twice.

Brian bit his lip. "Justin."

I grinned at him, and let just the head slip in. He gasped and arched his back, but I lifted up. It was stretching me, and I took a deep breath and let it out as I slowly lowered myself a little more.

Brian's hands were gripping my hips, and I felt his fingers digging into my skin. I raised myself so the head was barely inside me, and brought my ass down again. 

"God…" his eyes were tightly shut, and his head was tipped back. I leaned down, my hands flat on his chest, and kissed his throat where his pulse was beating. Then I sat back up and let myself sink all the way down on his cock, until I could feel his pubic hair brush against my skin. 

I tightened my ass and pulled up, and Brian surged up under me, pulling me back down on him. I closed my eyes and just let go, riding him while waves of feeling spread out from my prostate every time his cock moved over it. 

I gripped my cock in one hand, jerking on it, rubbing my thumb across the head and feeling the burning precome bubbling out of the slit. Every time my fist slid to the top of my shaft, I felt Brian's cock drag across my prostate. He was moaning under me, and I opened my eyes when I felt his thighs straining behind me, and his hips lifting off the bed.

I shifted a little, and he went in deeper, and we both cried out at the same time. I lost my grip on my cock, and got it back, and as soon as my fingers closed on it, I started to come. I clenched around his cock and ground down hard on it, feeling the explosion start right where the head of his dick was rubbing against me inside.

I was leaning down over Brian's chest, still shaking, when he jerked upwards one last time and spilled inside me. It was hot, and wet, and I felt it pulsing against the walls of my ass.

Brian pulled back a little. I lifted carefully off his cock, and then I lay down next to him. He'd rolled against me, and I laughed a little. "Wow."

He nodded. "Not bad."

I kicked him, but I was asleep before my foot made contact.

**Brian's POV**

Ted and Cynthia were standing by the conference table when I walked in.

Theodore handed me a Starbucks cup, an act of thoughtful generosity that filled me with dread. He started to speak, but I held my hand up and downed half of it. "All right, Theodore; proceed."

"The good news is that in 30 days you'll be your own landlord at Babylon."

I nodded. "And the bad news?"

"Yeah." Ted frowned. "The Millers have countered on the other two buildings, and you're not going to like it."

I walked away and sat at my desk. Ted laid the counter-offer in front of me. Jennifer had marked each section she thought was a problem; there were 11 little green arrow post-it notes.

I didn't look up when there was a knock at the door. I let Ted handle it while I kept reading. A few moments later, another Starbucks cup appeared next to my right hand. Without looking up, I told him, "I sincerely hope there's a shot of whiskey in that."

Cynthia was sitting on the sofa, reading her copy of the contract. "They're refusing the contingency clause?"

"Doesn't matter," said Ted. "We have the other building lined up."

She nodded. "But for some reason they're not quite as eager as they should be. Their price is still close to market, so it's not the money. What do they want?"

I frowned. "It's always money. Always. We're missing something." I glanced at Ted, who had his Blackberry out. "Call…"

"Jennifer. I am."

I went back to the contract.

**Justin's POV**

I woke up with a sore ass and more energy than I'd had since I got sick.

I lay there for a while, enjoying the feeling. After breakfast I almost went into the studio, but at the last minute I headed into the city instead. 

I pushed the door to Red Cape open with my shoulder, a coffee cup in each hand. Michael was busy with two customers, and didn't look up right away, but when he did, his face broke into a giant smile. "Justin!"

He came out from behind the counter and hugged me so hard I started to spill the coffee. "Michael…"

He laughed, took the cups from me, and set them on the counter. "God, it's good to see you. How are you?"

His customers closed the door behind them, and I picked up my coffee and carried it over to the sofa against the wall. Michael sat next to me. "I'm feeling almost normal today. So I thought I'd get out of the fucking house. Maybe stop by and see Daphne."

Michael's smile faded. "How is she?"

I shrugged. "She sounds kind of depressed to me, but her hearing is almost back to normal."

Michael nodded. "That whole thing was scary as fuck."

I opened the lid of my coffee and blew on it. It was too hot. "Yeah. No shit." I took a tentative sip, then put the lid back on. "So, feel like working on Rage this weekend?"

For the second time that day, Michael's face lit up. "You bet. Should I come out to the house?"

We made plans to get together on Sunday, and I left to go see Daphne. She didn't answer her cell phone, so I took a chance and called her mom, who told me to ignore any message from Daphne to the contrary and just come over. So I did.

She was sitting cross-legged on her bed flipping through a magazine when I opened the door. She didn't look up right away, so I didn't say anything, and after a minute she raised her eyes. "Justin!"

I walked over to the bed, sat down, and hugged her. She was stiff, and I pulled back. "Does your head still hurt?"

She shook her head. "Not right now. Sometimes I get really bad headaches."

I nodded. "Yeah. Me, too." Then I slid my arm around her shoulder, and she leaned into me with a sigh. I kissed her hair, and made her look at me. "Daph, you need to get dressed and get out of the house. For half an hour. Come out with me."

She shook her head. "God, Justin, I look terrible. Look at my hair."

I did, and had to agree. "Wear a hat."

She hit me weakly with her fist. "You're supposed to say it looks great."

"Do best friends lie to each other?"

She looked at me earnestly. "Whenever necessary."

I laughed. "Your hair looks great. Let's go show the world."

She ended up twisting her hair into a knot and pulling on her jeans. They were baggy on her, and not in a good way. She took one look at her ass in the mirror, and frowned. "God, I have no ass anymore." She glanced at me. "And your ass and hair look the same as ever. You suck."

"I apologize. The next time I nearly die of a communicable disease I'll try to lose more weight and forget how the blow dryer works."

She nodded. "Good." She slid her feet into her shoes. "Do I need a sweater?"

I assured her it was warm, and we went out. Her mom mouthed "Thank you" to me as we went out the door.

We ended up buying two slices of pizza and a couple of sodas and going over to see the renovated Point State Park. We didn't have to walk far, which was good, because I was feeling kind of worn out by the time we got to the new benches by the fountain, and Daphne had actually stopped chattering while we walked.

After we ate, we sat there looking at the water. She seemed to feel better, and looked around. "It looks almost as good as in the ads."

I nodded. "Brian likes to think it was his marketing campaign, but Pittsburgh definitely sucks less than at any time in our lives prior to this."

She contemplated the planters full of flowers near the benches. "You could sound slightly more enthusiastic about our native city."

I finished my soda. "I'll leave that to Brian."

She was exhausted again by the time we got back to the car, and I looked at her as we pulled out of the parking lot. "Will you be up to going back to school in September?"

"God, I hope so. I'm behind enough as it is." She sounded like she was going to cry.

I turned at the light. "Daph, have you thought about seeing someone, you know, a counselor or something?"

She didn't answer, and I looked at her when I got to the next stoplight. She had a peculiar look on her face. "What?"

"That's funny, coming from you."

"I was 18 and suffering from a brain injury. You're working on your Master's in public health. What's your excuse?"

She sighed, and the light changed. "Maybe I will. I just can't seem to shake it off."

I took my right hand off the wheel and put it on her left hand. She turned it over, and we rode the rest of the way home in silence like that.

**Brian's POV**

I went home early to change for dinner, and Justin was sound asleep in our bedroom. Even after I showered, he was still dead to the world, one hand tucked under his cheek and the duvet pulled up around his neck. I knelt on the bed and poked him. Anything more tender would probably turn into sex, and we didn't have time for that.

He licked his lips and mumbled, so I poked him again. He pulled his hand out from under his cheek and swatted at me, but he didn't open his eyes, so I did it a third time. 

One eye opened. Maybe they both did; the other one was mashed into the pillow, so I wasn't sure. "Fuck off."

"We're meeting Virginia in 90 minutes." 

He flopped onto his back and groaned. I stood up, and looked down at him. "Get up." Then I poked him with my foot.

"I hate you." But he was getting up.

I was in the media room checking my email when I heard him come downstairs, and I met him in the hall. "Well, you cleaned up surprisingly well, all things considered." He looked beautiful, in fact, still a little flushed from his nap.

He smiled at me. "You're all right, too. Ready?"

Justin didn't try to drive, which told me he was even more tired than his near-coma would suggest. I glanced at him after we got on the road. "What wore you out today?"

He was drumming his fingers on his thigh. "I went and saw Michael, and then I took Daphne to the park."

"How is she?" I'd gone to see her once, and she hadn't been her usual bubbly self. But that was to be expected, I supposed, after almost dying and everything.

"Depressed and whining about her hair."

"That's a good sign. I remember the day I started caring about my hair again after my radiation was over."

He laughed.

Virginia was waiting in the bar, one long, elegant leg crossed over the other while she sipped a glass of wine. She let Justin kiss her on both cheeks, and shook my hand gracefully.

After we ordered, she smiled at Justin. "You seem much better."

He smiled back. "I feel a lot better. And I'm painting." He laughed. "In case that's what you're checking up on."

She shook her head. "No, I knew you'd start painting as soon as you could hold a brush. I'm here for another reason." She paused as the waiter brought out our first course.

Justin ignored his salad. "Other reason?"

She took a sip of wine, and nodded. "You've received an interesting invitation. It's a great honor, and I wanted to explain it to you in person."

I looked at Justin, and he nodded at her. "Okay."

"Are you familiar with the Reynaud Trust in London?"

Justin hesitated. "I don't think so, but it sounds vaguely familiar."

"They fund what might be called unusual, even eccentric, arts programs. One of them is an artist in residency program that only non-fine arts institutions can apply for."

This time Justin nodded. "I remember now. That's the program where Cathy Marsh got discovered."

"Exactly." She paused again. "This year, the program is being held by a history department at a university in London that has no fine arts program at all, but does have a huge museum space. They recently moved their school's collection to a new building and converted the building into studio and gallery space, and applied for this funding.

"They've invited a single emerging artist from each cultural region: Africa, South America, the Pacific Islands, China, the Middle East, India, Japan, Southern Europe, Northern Europe, and North America."

I'd stopped looking at her, and was just watching Justin. Everything was right on his face, the way it always was: curiosity, hope, worry, doubt, then excitement, and then doubt again. 

Virginia was still speaking. "They've invited you as their North American artist for this year. You were their first choice. This is…" she sipped her wine again while the waiter removed her all-but-untouched plate. "A very, very significant achievement."

Justin sat back in his chair. "What would it involve?"

She didn't waste time. "Nine months in London, starting in September. They provide you with studio space, a flat on the grounds of the University, and a small honorarium. And at the end, all the artists will show their work at the Reynaud Trust's annual show." Justin was staring at her. "The same show where Cathy Marsh broke out."

Justin seemed to have lost the power of speech, so I asked a question. "She's the American artist who is the youngest ever to be shown at the Venice Biennale?" 

Virginia nodded. "And today, her work sells for seven figures. And when she did the program, she was only 25." She leaned forward and for the first time, I heard a little emotion in her voice. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance, Justin. Even if lightning doesn't strike twice, which it probably won't, it will give you a European exposure that would take years, even a decade, to achieve in any other way." 

Justin picked up his wine glass, but didn't taste it before he set it back down. "When do I have to answer them?"

She reached into her sleek bag and handed him a small packet of papers. "Look these over and let me know by the end of the week." 

I raised my brow. "So soon?"

She nodded. "If the first choice can't accept, they move down the list. The program begins in the fall, so they need to move fast." She looked at Justin again. "It's almost unheard of to decline, although if you feel your health isn't up to it yet…"

Justin shook his head. "I'll look this over, but I can't think of a reason to say no. I'm just… sort of stunned."

Virginia smiled, and reached across the table to lay one manicured hand on Justin's. "Good. Take the information home, discuss it with each other, and let me know as soon as you can."

After dinner, we put Virginia in a cab and I started to ask the valet for our car. Justin put his hand on my arm, and stopped me. "Can we walk around the block first, or something?"

I felt my lip turn in, thinking about how tired he'd been earlier, but I nodded. 

We walked down to the river, and he stood staring at the lights along the bank. I just looked at him, and he finally turned towards me and put his forehead on my chest. "Fuck."

I nodded, and put my arms around him. "In a good way."

He grinned up at me. "Is there a bad way to fuck?"

I laughed. "I taught you well."

He went on his toes, and kissed me briefly. "You did."

We didn't talk, just watched the water a little longer. "We should get back," I said finally.

"I'm not an invalid." But he started to walk towards the restaurant.

He was quiet all the way home, but whenever I looked at his face, his eyes were shining.

It was only 10 when we got home, but I followed him upstairs. When I got in bed, he wasn't asleep; he had his head on his hand and watched me settle against the headboard. I started to kiss him, and he kissed me back, and then stopped me with his fingers on my lips.

"Nine months is a long time." His voice was quiet.

I slid down, and pulled him with me. He rested his head on my chest, and I nodded against his hair. "Well," I said, "it's a long time out of a year. But out of the rest of our lives…." I had to clear my throat… "It's not that long."

Justin's head whipped up, and he gave me the most radiant smile I'd seen on his face since he'd been sick, and kissed me. When he finally pulled away, I touched my forehead to his. "I'm fucking proud of you." It came out almost in a whisper; I didn't know why.

Justin nuzzled his face into my neck; I could feel him laughing like a breath on my skin. I lifted my leg and pressed my heel into the mattress, using it as leverage to flip him onto his back. I started to kiss his neck, and then slid down his chest, licking and biting at his nipples and belly before I brushed my lips over his cock.

It was only half-hard, and I took it in my mouth and got it all the way there, feeling it fill up and push against the back of my throat. Justin's hands were in my hair, and his hips were straining upward while I pressed my thumb against his perineum and used my throat and tongue on his cock.

I didn't stop until I felt him freeze, his hips up off the bed, and start to flood into my mouth. Before I'd even finished swallowing his come, I was pulling his legs over my shoulders, pushing into him, hearing him almost yell when the head of my cock passed over his prostate. His legs slid down off my shoulders, but I didn't care. I felt them wrap around my back, and I just drove into him, every wave of heat and light crashing a little higher, slick skin and his hands, grabbing onto me.

I heard him make a low, rough sound, deep in his throat, and I shifted my hips so I was stroking that sweet spot inside him again. He gasped and I felt his heels digging into me, so I did it again. He was clenching hard on my cock, and I couldn't think, couldn't hear anymore. I just fucked him, white hot and fast.

His hand was between us, jerking hard on his cock, and I buried my face in his neck and let go, pouring my come inside him while his hands grabbed at the backs of my thighs, pulling me deeper.

I finally fell down on him. His legs fell slowly to the bed on either side of our bodies, but I didn't move.

He murmured and opened his eyes when I pulled out gently, but they closed again when I settled down next to him. I lay there, watching him breathe, and there was light coming in the window before I fell asleep.


	2. Directions, Chapter 2

  
  


**Directions, Chapter Two**  
By Xie

 _"We must be careful to build our life around our visions, rather than building our visions out of our history."_ -Alan Cohen

**Justin's POV**

I thought London would be a lot like New York, but it wasn't.

At least, I didn't think so at first. Later, I started to see the things they had in common, and not just that they were both big cities. I felt it most in the museums, the large, famous ones, and the small ones, too. It was the feeling of a world, a universe, of art and creation, all flowing into and out of those two cities, always changing, always moving.

But that was later. At first it was just unfamiliar streets and foods, a jangle of car horns and a new vocabulary to learn.

The gallery space, studios, and housing for the resident artists were grouped around a garden. The residential buildings were beautiful from the outside, looking like a street scene from some show on Masterpiece Theater, but inside, they'd been carved up into studio apartments without much regard for architectural or aesthetic values.

My flat had a single window, next to the kitchen. There was a small table with two chairs in front of it, looking out on the front porch and the garden. I put my laptop there instead of the desk, at least until the weather got cold.

There was a beautiful old fireplace with a space heater sort of back-filled into it, something I at first resented and later came to appreciate. The bathroom was a surprise, big and with heated pipes running along the walls, and a huge tub. The shower head came to my shoulders, and I was amused imagining Brian trying to use it – until the first time he actually did, which was less amusing. But that was later, too.

I'd never lived on campus, and I wasn't used to the feeling of living inside an academic bubble. Besides, PIFA was only a fraction of the size of the London Institute of Historical Studies, or "Lizzie," as the students called her with varying degrees of affection and disgust. Ugly modern buildings were jammed up against ornate brick structures that looked more like places of worship than places of study. Half the library was in an old stone building, dimly lit and freezing cold but beautiful enough that it was featured on the school's website and official seal. The other half was in a 70s monstrosity of cement and glass, ugly even for the day and painful to look at now – although it was sometimes the only warm building on the campus.

Outside the walled square was a different, noisier world, a maze of small streets lined with pubs, coffeehouses, and a thousand cheap places to eat. The first night, though, I was just grateful the school had stocked my tiny refrigerator with a few basics, because after I dropped my bag and dug out my laptop and new cell phone, I was too fucking hungry to go looking for food.

There were bread, eggs, and cheese, so I made toast, an omelet, and coffee in a stovetop coffeemaker like the one I'd used on my hot plate in my studio in Pittsburgh. After I ate, I flipped open my cell phone and laughed. I punched in Brian's number on speed dial.

"Now I see why you wanted me to get the phone with the really big screen."

He didn't laugh, but I could tell he was smiling. "I knew you'd miss my dick, so I thought I'd give you something to look at until you had the real thing up your ass again."

After we got off the phone, I debated going to bed. I felt more awake than I had before we talked, but no matter what my body thought, it was the middle of the night local time, and I had things to do in the morning. I didn't have a sleeping pill, an oversight I'd probably pay for in the morning, but I drank some of the nasty ultra-pasteurized milk in the refrigerator and went to bed.

The sheets were cold, and even though the quad was quiet, I could hear unfamiliar sounds everywhere. Voices and traffic from the distant street, the creaking of an old building, the hum of the small refrigerator, footsteps on the stairs to the floor above me.

I turned on my side, and almost laughed at the twinge in my ass. Brian had promised to send me off with a fuck I'd still feel in a week, and he'd probably done just that.

We'd spent the weekend before I left in New York. It pushed my departure up a couple of days, which sucked since Michael and I had limited time to finalize the next issue of Rage. It's not like he could run over to London for last minute changes. But Kalli had a show, and I'd have had a layover in New York even if I'd left from Pittsburgh, so I figured, what the hell.

A few days before I left, I went over to Daphne's. She'd let her apartment go, and was still living with her parents. I was finally mostly over the effects of the meningitis, but it had taken her a lot longer than it took me. I'd spent most of the summer trying to cheer her up between doses of what I liked to think of as sound advice from her best friend and she called nagging.

Lately she'd graduated from spending most of her time in her bedroom to hanging out in the living room, which I thought was a good first step towards going back to school and getting out on her own again – something she couldn't do fast enough after high school, as I reminded her on a regular basis.

I sat in the chair across from where she was curled up on the sofa, and contemplated her. I wasn't sure, but it was possible her ass was starting to re-emerge somewhere under her ratty sweatpants. And I knew for a fact she'd made an appointment to get her hair cut, even though she'd rescheduled it four times.

I grinned at her. "If you haven't done something about your hair before I get back, that's it. We're through."

She threw a pillow at me, which I took as a good sign. "I'll go. I'm ready this time."

I looked at her some more. "What did you decide about school?" She was supposed to start the week I left.

She hesitated. "I have to let them know by Monday."

I shook my head. "Daph. Stop being a drama queen."

She laughed. "I'm going back."

I nodded. "Then definitely, don't reschedule your hair appointment again."

If she'd had another pillow, I'm sure she'd have hit me with it, but she just glared at me. I bullied her into her jeans and a t-shirt, and took her out for coffee.

After I dropped her off at home, I came back to an empty house. Brian had gone to Chicago on a business trip that day, and was coming back that night. He normally would have gone the night before or stayed the night after the meeting, but he came up with several reasons why he couldn't do that, none of which had to do with my impending departure for London. I left it to Ted and Michael to mock him for that. I had to pack.

He'd left so early that morning I hadn't gotten up yet, bitching about something to do with Ted. I pulled the pillow over my head and didn't listen. I kind of regretted that when I got home, though. I normally didn't think that much about whether we fell asleep or woke up together – we'd always kept kind of different hours. We just didn't have all that many of them before I left.

**Brian's POV**

When I first started traveling on business, I liked it. I liked airports and airplanes, strange cities, and expensive hotels. I liked finishing up a day of meetings with a night at unfamiliar clubs full of guys I hadn't fucked yet and would never see again.

By the time Justin began his great London adventure, everything to do with air travel had long ago lost whatever charm a delusional younger me had seen in it. It was nothing but stupid people, long lines, bad air, and a huge, pointless, boring waste of time.

Nonetheless, when Justin's ass and my dick were on different sides of the Atlantic Ocean, I did rediscover an appreciation for the miracle of modern aviation.

But that night, when I got back to Pittsburgh, all I felt was tired. I should have stayed in Chicago, and if I'd known when I set up the trip that I'd be at Kinnetik before 7 that morning, sucking down coffee with Ted, trying to make sense of the new set of real estate contracts the Millers had given Jennifer the night before, I would have. As it was, I'd barely gotten the counter-offer signed in time to make my flight.

My plane back to Pittsburgh got in just before midnight, and it was after 1 when I got home. I pulled into the garage, and walked in the door to the kitchen. I was hungry, but too tired to do anything about it. I was too tired to go up the fucking stairs, but I did anyway, dropping my clothes on the floor at the foot of the bed.

Justin was asleep, sprawled out on this stomach, his head turned towards my side of the bed, hand tucked under his cheek. He opened his eyes when I slid under the duvet, and turned a little more towards me.

I let him roll into me, let his legs and arms wind around me. He felt warm and sleepy, and I sighed and burrowed into the pillow, his head under my chin.

"How did it go?"

I kissed his hair. "Like it always does. Brilliantly."

I heard him laugh, then felt him kiss my bare shoulder. Muscles I'd forgotten I had started relaxing as his tongue trailed over them. My neck, the spot behind my ear, lapping along my collarbone, then swirling on my nipple.

My hands were tangled in his hair, and he was licking his way down my stomach, tracing every muscle, playing in my belly button for a minute, kissing my scar. I felt his breath on the skin of my cock, and then his mouth, sliding down, meeting the grip of his hand at the base.

I was holding his other hand, but I let it go when he tugged it away. He didn't take his time, didn't make me wait or beg, just took me as deep in as he could, and swallowed. I felt his throat, wet and hot, moving around the head of my dick, and then his hand and mouth sliding upward, while his tongue played on the head, then under the rim.

He sucked hard as he went down, then swallowed around me again, and I felt all those muscles tense up again, but in a burning, aching, good way, everything shooting through me, heat and pleasure mixed together. It all poured out of me, into his mouth, his throat moving around me while he drank my come down.

I was lying there, my heart pounding, while he crawled slowly back up my body. His lips were soft and dark, and he was flushed. I felt him curl himself against me, his head on my chest. "Go to sleep," he whispered, his lips moving over my skin in a kiss.

And I did.

I woke up the next morning, and found Justin sitting out by the pool, drinking coffee and reading email.

"Kalli's freaking out."

I grunted and drank coffee while he told me a long story about Kalli's upcoming show. I didn't follow most of it, but that was fine, because I also didn't give a shit. Whatever it was, I was sure she'd figure it out.

I was fingering my hair into place in the bathroom when Justin came up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. "I have to drop some panels off to Michael sometime today. How about I stop by Kinnetik before I go home and we can fuck on your desk?"

I laughed. "Assuming your mommy isn't there with papers for me to sign, I think that can be arranged." And I turned around and kissed him.

He was leaving in five days.

I decided not to think about that, a strategy that had in the past proven effective only in the short term. I decided not to think about that, either.

 

**Justin's POV**

Getting things handled with Rage before I'd left turned out to be tricky. I'd been sick, which had fucked things up, and then came my trip, which fucked things up some more. In the last issue, Michael and I had torn Rage's lair apart and driven him to the edge of madness with a magic potion that made him feel the emotions of everyone whose mind he tried to control. We'd left him standing on the roof of Babylon experiencing the combined anguish of everyone in Gayopolis, not even aware of JT trying to get to him before it was too late.

Not a situation either of us wanted to leave hanging.

But during what was supposed to be our last work session before I left, it wasn't me who was holding things up. I was sitting on the sofa at the store, waiting for Michael to finish ringing up a customer. It was the fifth time we'd been interrupted since I'd gotten there.

When he finally came back, I gave him a look. He shook his head. "I know. But I couldn't find anyone to cover for me. I should have just closed for the day."

"Well, we have to get this done before I go." I shook my coffee cup, but it was empty.

Michael nodded, and sat down. Just then, the door opened, and I sighed. But it was Debbie, beaming at us over arms laden with diner bags. She kicked the door shut behind her, and then tucked her chin over the tower of bags and flipped the sign to "closed" with one hand.

"Hi, boys! I figured you'd be hungry." She grinned. "You always are."

After we ate, Debbie put her container on the counter. "You're going to miss good American diner food while you're in England, Sunshine."

I nodded, and sucked the last of my milkshake. "I'll try not to starve, Deb. I promise."

Michael grinned and poked at me with his foot. "That's not all he'll miss."

I poked him back, and Debbie looked at me, eyebrows raised. "Good thing Brian can afford the long distance phone sex bill."

Michael laughed. "And has all those saved up frequent flyer miles for the transatlantic booty calls."

I slowly chewed and swallowed my sandwich. "Speaking of which, I'm meeting him at Kinnetik as soon as we're done." And I looked pointedly at the panels on the floor.

Debbie laughed, and started cleaning up the mess from lunch. After she smeared lipstick all over both of us and left, Michael and I finally came to an agreement on the cover and two panels we weren't happy with, and I headed for Kinnetik.

When I got there, my mom wasn't around, but I had a feeling my plans for a fast visit to the loft, or even an office quickie, weren't going to work out like I'd hoped.

Cynthia gave me an absent smile when I walked into Brian's office. "Hi, Justin."

"Hi." I tugged my portfolio over my head, and put it on the coffee table.

She turned back to Brian, who was sitting at his desk, frowning at a pile of papers in front of him. "Jennifer wasn't able to find out anything more."

Brian started to flip through them, and shook his head. "What the fuck is going on with these people?"

Cynthia sat down next to me on the sofa. "I told Elaine to get Ted in here, too."

Brian snorted. "I don't know why. Unless he has a crystal ball, I think we may have to just call their bluff and see what happens."

Ted had walked in. "Can't help you out with the ball thing, Bri, sorry."

I laughed, and Brian frowned. "You know, Theodore, one day they're going to come down here and draw a little chalk outline on the floor of your cubicle. And yet, they'll never solve the crime. Think about that when you feel the need to start with the ball jokes."

I finally said something. "I'm guessing from the general sense of doom pervading the place that you still haven't gotten a deal on the buildings next to Babylon?"

Ted shook his head. "There's something new every week. It's like trying to nail a moving target."

I grinned. "Brian's normally pretty good at that."

Brian snorted. "Thanks for the vote of confidence, but in this case, unless I come up with some kind of Rage-ian powers of mind control in the next few days, we're fucked."

"Without lube." Ted and Cynthia chorused it together.

Brian gestured at them. "Make that two little chalk outlines." Then he stood up. "Now, if the two of you will excuse us, Justin and I have something very important to discuss."

Ted gave him a look. "Discuss as in, 'Harder, faster, deeper, that's it, right there, don't stop'?"

Brian had come out from behind his desk, and gave Ted a bland smile as he ushered him towards the door with an arm around his shoulder. "There won't even be a chalk outline, Theodore. They'll never find the body."

Cynthia followed Ted out, laughing, and Brian had his tie off and belt unbuckled before he'd finished closing the door behind them.

And that about summed up the next two days. We fucked more than we had since we'd first started doing it raw, and I tried frantically to get everything done before I had to leave on Friday. Even though I knew Brian and I probably should talk a little bit about what this whole thing was going to be like, it never felt like the right time. Or maybe I just didn't have the energy to work through Brian's "don't think about it and it will go away" bullshit. And it's not like I minded all the fucking; I wasn't sure you could actually bank sex, but I was willing to give it a shot.

Wednesday night, Brian had made me come so hard I just lay there while he cleaned me off, and then I fell asleep. I woke up later – how much later I wasn't sure, but Brian wasn't there. I got out of bed and pulled on my sweat pants.

The house was quiet when I stood at the top of the stairs, and I didn't see any lights. I tried the media room, and he was standing where I figured I'd find him, staring out the window, glass of scotch on the sill.

I decided the fact that it wasn't the bottle was a good sign.

"Hey." I slipped my arms around his waist, and rested my forehead on his bare back.

I felt him take a breath and let it out, but he didn't say anything.

"How long have you been here?"

He shrugged, then glanced at the clock by the computer. "Not long."

"Come to bed." I kissed his shoulder.

He picked up his glass and almost drained it. I reached around and took it out of his hand, finishing the last bit of scotch before I set it down again.

It was my turn to take a deep breath. "You know, Brian, when we start hiding things from each other is when we get in trouble."

He didn't even let it hang there for a second. He turned around and slid his hands on either side of my face. "I want you to go."

I put my hands on his wrists. "I know. That's not what I mean."

He sighed. "Then what?"

I spoke slowly. "There are things about this that are going to suck."

He smiled a little. "I'm aware."

I looked at him, and he surprised me by not trying to kiss me or stick his hands down my pants. He just kept looking back, and after a while, he said, "I'm going to fucking miss you."

I felt myself smile, and then he did kiss me, and I kissed him back. "Me, too. That's the part that's going to suck."

He laughed, his forehead pressed against mine. I noticed his eyes slide to the glass on the window sill, and I shook my head. "It's empty."

We got the bottle and sat on the sofa, legs tangled up, passing it back and forth. A few minutes later, Brian cleared his throat. "I really do want you to go."

I kind of poked his leg with my toe. "And I really know that."

"I'd be pissed as hell if you passed this up."

"Brian…"

He didn't let me finish. "You're young, there's going to be lots of things like this, for the rest of your life. You have no idea what your life is going to be like, or what you'll…"

This time I cut him off. "Brian, this is exactly the kind of drama queen thing I meant when I said we get in trouble. What the fuck are you talking about?"

He looked at me while he took a slug from the bottle, then shook his head. "I don't mean us."

I kept my eyes on his, and after a minute, I relaxed. "Okay."

"And I'm not a drama queen. You're the one with the tiara in this house."

I took the bottle out of his hand. "We'll just have to agree to disagree on that."

We sat there for a while, handing the bottle back and forth.

**Brian's POV**

Justin had come downstairs looking for me. I guess I'd known he would, although when I fucked him earlier, he'd come so hard I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd passed out for the rest of the night.

It was dark outside the window, but I could see him reflected in the glass, his blond hair and pale skin against the blackness. I felt his lips kiss my shoulder.

Justin wanted to talk. There was nothing unusual about that; Justin not wanting to talk was usually one of the signs of the apocalypse. But I wanted to talk, too. I just had no fucking idea how to start.

Fortunately, he did. He also knew how to get me tangled up with him on the sofa, both of us getting progressively drunker while he explained to me exactly how far he intended to pursue his campaign of total world domination. I had to hand it to him; my plans to push Kinnetik and Babylon into the advertising and gay club stratospheres had nothing on where he was going with his life.

He'd snagged the scotch bottle out of my hand, and took a long drink from it before looking at me with a sincere and half-drunk expression that made him particularly hot. "Brian."

I nodded and took the bottle back. "I'm listening."

"You have to believe I'm doing what I want to do. I always do."

I conceded his point by offering him another drink, which he took. Then he held onto the bottle and looked at me even more sincerely than before, and surprised me with what he said next. "I came back from New York because I wanted to live here, with you. If I'd wanted to stay in New York, I would have." Then the little fucker gave me his brightest, cockiest smile. "And made you come after me."

I laughed and grabbed the bottle from him. It was almost empty, and I finished it off, dragged my bare arm across my mouth, set the empty bottle on the table, and looked right at him. "I would have."

He leaned into me, and put his mouth on mine; the fumes of the scotch made my eyes burn. "I know."

I had to laugh. "Seems you know all kinds of things about me, Sunshine."

He kissed my throat, taking a little bite right where my pulse was beating. "You should be used to that by now."

We sat there for a while, not really even kissing, half-drunk and half-asleep. I felt his breathing start to slow down, and I almost let myself fall asleep with him there on the sofa. But when I closed my eyes, despite the booze and his arms around me, despite the fact that it was the fucking middle of the night, my brain wouldn't shut up.

I took a deep breath, and whispered into his hair. "I don't want you to give anything up." The phrase "for me" was hanging in the air, but I didn't say it.

I wasn't sure when I said it if he was even awake, but he was. His breathing changed, and when he answered me, his voice was absolutely clear. "I decided a long time ago I wasn't giving up anything. I want it all: this house, and New York, and London and Paris and Rome and any fucking where else in the world I decide to go. I want my family, and my friends, and my art, and I want you. I'm not giving any of it up."

I pulled him up so he was looking at me. "Sometimes having it all isn't that easy."

He just laughed, and gave me a look like I was the slowest guy in the class. "I never, ever thought or said it would be easy. I just said it was what I was going to do."

I felt my lips fold in, and I gnawed on the lower one for a second. Then I laughed. "Oh, well, in that case…" I kissed him... "Keep up the good work."

**Justin's POV**

I loved the feeling of Brian laughing against my mouth. I love Brian laughing. I love his hands when they press gently on my shoulders, turning me over, running down my back, my ass, my legs.

I love him when he's drunk and just a little out of control, when he's needing something, when he's crawling all over me, and into me.

That night, I felt his breath on my skin, moving down, following his hands. I felt him slide off the sofa, leaving me lying there, my face resting on my folded arms, turned towards him.

He slid my sweatpants down, pulled them off, tossed them away. He crawled back up behind me, and I felt his mouth on my neck, his hands working themselves into my hair. I tried to buck against him a little, to give my cock room underneath me; it shifted up against my stomach, and then Brian pressed me back down.

He was licking my back, every bump in my spine, the dip over my ass, down my crack. I pressed against the sofa again, and then gasped as he bit me, his tongue licking where he'd marked me.

I took a deep breath, and as I let it out he dragged his tongue over my hole, not pausing even though I moaned and pushed against his mouth. His hands were on my hips, and he moved back up, kissing, licking, rubbing his cock against my legs.

He went back to my ass with his tongue, but just brushed my hole again. He kissed the backs of my thighs, and then spread them with his hands, kissing the skin inside them. His tongue dragged over my balls, and I heard myself whimper as he took one of them, and then the other, in his mouth, licking, sucking, his wet fingers starting to swirl over my hole.

This time Brian let me push back, and I felt his hands on the backs of my thighs, pressing me up onto my knees. I buried my face in my arms and rocked against his mouth, and protested when he pulled away, until I heard him opening the drawer on the table next to the sofa.

I felt the coldness of the lube brush my balls and my hole, his fingers pressing against me and then inside me. It wasn't cold anymore, but I shivered when he found my prostate, shoved hard against his hand, hearing myself saying "Fuck me, fuck me" while he slowly rubbed inside me with his fingers.

Then he was lying on me, kissing me everywhere he could reach, the head of his cock resting against my hole and then inside it, one smooth motion, a pause, then a thrust that hit me where I wanted to feel it, that spot that felt like nothing else. He filled me up and pushed me, stretched me, kissing me and biting my ear, saying things against my hair that I tried to hear, tried to remember.

I thought I heard him say he loved me, but then I thought I was wrong. But he said it again, against my ear, hot and so quiet I still wasn't sure. I started to say something, that I loved him, or even just his name, but all I could do was gasp because his hand closed hard on my cock. I pushed against his palm, felt his fingers tighten on me, his thumb brush over my slit just as his cock slid across my prostate, over and over.

He said my name, and it sounded choked, his hips hard up against me, his balls pressing into my ass, hot wetness flooding inside me.

I couldn't stay up on my knees, and his hand was still under me when I fell onto the sofa.

He was kissing my neck, and nuzzling my hair, and I wanted to sleep, but I didn't. I told him I loved him, and I felt him laughing against my skin again. Then he slid off me, pulling me with him, and we went back up to bed.

**Brian's POV**

When I found the empty bottle lying on the floor next to the media room sofa the next morning, I laughed. Justin was still sound asleep upstairs, and if I didn't know he had more things to do that day than there was time to do them, I'd have gone to the office without waking him up.

He bitched and complained all the way to the airport on Friday, about the cost of shipping his art supplies to London, at Kalli for scheduling her show the weekend before he was leaving, at me for not driving his precious car carefully enough – the Corvette not having room for Justin's luggage, given that he was going for nine months and seemed to believe they didn't sell clothing, shoes, books, or sketchpads in Great Britain.

Kalli's opening was that night, and I tried to reconcile her counter-cultural Brooklyn artists' co-op with the chic Manhattan gallery aura she'd been wearing the last time I saw her. She laughed and told me it was all an act, and I wasn't sure which persona she was referring to.

We went to the airport on Monday morning, and when I kissed him goodbye, he had dark circles under his eyes. Of course, that was my fault; I'd woken him up an hour before the alarm went off, since "never enough" has always been my motto, especially when it came to fucking Justin.

I was at the office when Justin called from London. He'd just gotten into his new place, and was laughing at the screensaver of my dick I'd programmed into his cell phone. I didn't tell him how much his international cell phone bill was going to be, and he'd never know, since it was coming to me. Fuck if I was going to be reduced to cybersex. Phone sex was bad enough.

He told me about the woman who'd picked him up at the airport, the amazing light and space in his studio, and the garden outside his flat. He didn't say much about the flat itself, except to tell me something I didn't quite follow about the shower.

After a while of that, he stopped talking, and I just listened to him breathe for a minute. "Well, which need do you fill first: Food, sleep, or jacking off?"

He laughed, and from the tired sound of his voice, I was guessing the second was going to win. "I shouldn't be this tired. It's five hours earlier where my body's from."

"You haven't closed your eyes for ten minutes in the last two days," I pointed out.

Justin laughed again. "Yes, thanks to your desire to send me off across the ocean with a sore ass, a sore dick, and chapped lips."

I licked my own chapped lips, and smiled. "You wouldn't have it any other way."

"True." He was quiet again. "Three weeks, and you'll be here."

"Yeah."

"Okay, I guess I’m going to sleep. If I'm awake at 3 in the morning, I'll call you and you can help me jerk off."

I snorted. "Better start adapting to the time change right away, Sunshine; take a sleeping pill."

We said "later" and I went back to my laptop. There was something about this last contract that was nagging at my mind. I punched in Ted's extension on the phone. "What's this company here, Center Development Corp? When did they get added to the contract?"

Ted didn't answer right away, and when he did, he sounded surprised. "Huh."

"Well?"

"Hang on, I'll be right there."

He came in the office door, carrying his laptop in front of him. He put it on my desk, and gestured at it. "Look at this."

I read the file, and shook my head. "Fuck me."

"Mean something to you?" He still sounded kind of confused.

"Well, Theodore, let's put it this way." I stood up and got a drink from the cart near my desk. "I still have no fucking idea what's going on, but I know something more than I did five minutes ago." And I went outside and told Elaine to get Cynthia's ass in my office right away.


	3. Directions, Chapter 3

**Directions, Chapter Three**  
By Xie

_"In the air all directions lead everywhere."_ -H.G. Wells

**Justin's POV**

I shifted in my seat, waiting for the presentation to start. I scratched at a spot of paint on what I'd thought were clean jeans. I wondered if I actually still had any clean jeans.

The microphone screeched, and I looked up. A short Asian guy I'd never seen was standing at the podium. Next to him was Shen Chao, one of the artists in the program. They got the microphone to behave just as the screen behind their heads sputtered into life.

Shen looked back at it, and slightly adjusted his laptop on the table. The image leapt into focus, a startling slate-gray wall against a wall of gigantic paned windows, a vivid red figure in front of it.

The translator introduced himself as David Chang, but I barely listened as he turned Shen's murmured commentary into English. I wanted to just walk right inside the slides as they flashed, one after the other, on the screen. I shook my head and tried to focus on what was being said, since I knew from the captions on the slides that the piece itself was thousands of miles away, in a Beijing gallery.

When the presentation ended, I walked up to where the translator was standing with Shen. "That was beautiful," I said. I tried to look at them both when I said it, but the artist didn't look up.

David said something I couldn't quite hear, and Shen lifted his head and said a single word.

"He thanks you," David said. 

I smiled at Shen, and nodded. I might have been frustrated at my inability to speak to him directly, but I really had nothing else I wanted to say just then.

I walked back towards my seat, where Jense, another artist, was waiting for me. "Do you want to come out for a drink?" She gestured to a small group of artists and students waiting by the door.

The pub nearest campus was noisy and crowded, like it always was. I hadn't worn a jacket, and I was freezing by the time we got there, and for once didn't mind the fact that the beer wasn't cold. 

Jense slid onto the bench next to me. "Can you believe that was plaster?" 

I shook my head. "I wish he'd talked more about his process. I should have asked, but it seemed so…"

"Reductionist." She laughed, and sipped her beer.

"Exactly. When you look at it, wondering how he did it seems so beside the point." I grinned. "I never know whether to be resentful or inspired when I see something like that."

I got back to my flat an hour or so later, and turned the little space heater wedged into the fireplace all the way to "high." From bitter experience, I knew it took a while to warm up the room. I seriously wondered if it was going to warm the place at all when winter came; it wasn't even October yet. Daphne had said in her email that morning they were having a heat wave at home. That sounded fine to me just then.

I dug out my cell phone, and called her. "So, how's school?"

"Hot. Stinking and hot. And did I mention, really hot?" She sounded exasperated.

"Poor baby. You should come here. I have the heat on."

She sighed. "It's supposed to break on the weekend. I just wish the clinic had better air conditioning. You get ten feet away from the reception area and the temperature goes up 80 degrees."

"Which would make it hot enough to boil water. It's good you're not a math major." I thought about it more. "Or a meteorologist."

"Whatever." But she sounded a little happier. "Otherwise, school is fine. It's good to be doing things, going out."

"Yeah, the moldering in the parents' spare room was getting tired."

"Shut up. That was my childhood bedroom, you asshole." But she was finally laughing. "How are you, other than blissfully cold?"

I bored her with a description of Shen's presentation for a while, and she made appreciative noises for the five minutes best friends are required to show interest in each other's obsessions. Then she changed the subject.

"So, Brian gets there in three days."

I rolled my eyes at her subtlety. "Really? I'd forgotten."

"Shut up. Liar." 

I grinned. "I fucking miss you."

"I miss you, too." Silence for a minute, then, "Although I'm sure not as much as you miss him."

She'd poked me about that a few times. Half of me didn't want to admit I missed him as much as I did, because it seemed a little Lifetime movie moment. Half of me wanted nothing more than to spend the next hour telling my best friend in excruciating detail just how lonely and horny I was, particularly at night. So I went for the happy medium. "Yeah, well. The next time I go away for nine months, I'm not going away for nine months."

She laughed. "It's been less than four weeks. Drama queen."

"You can get really horny in three and a half weeks." 

I could hear her eyes rolling. "Oh, please. Welcome to my world. And the world of every normal person on the planet."

I started to protest, but she cut me off. "Don't bother. It's not like I don't know the two of you are totally abnormal."

I laughed. "God, I wish you'd never taken those psych classes."

"Justin?" She had her teacher-voice on.

I made my voice very patient. "Yes, Daphne?" 

"I knew you two were freaks when we were still in high school."

It was true; she had. "I seem to recall you saying something about that at the time."

She snorted, and then started a long story about someone she'd seen that week at the clinic. It was nice to hear an American voice, and nice to hear her sounding happy, so I just let myself drift for a while. It was late.

But when we got off the phone, I was wide awake. Ever since I'd gotten to London, I'd found this time of night hard to figure out. I kept feeling like I should be in my studio, even now, when it was past midnight.

It wasn't that I minded painting during open studio hours. I'd always painted well even when there was chaos all around, so having people drop in during the daytime never bothered me. I'd gotten into the habit of painting alone at the house, and I was enjoying the change. But I hadn't fallen into a nighttime routine here yet. I had adjusted to the time change, but not to living on my own again.

I was spared the decision, because my phone rang. It was Brian. I answered the phone while I switched off the lights, and headed for bed.

**Brian's POV**

I finished cheering up the homesick lad, a project I'd been devoting myself to with varying degrees of success. So far, phone sex seemed to be the most effective strategy, but not always practical given the time difference. Just when Justin was crawling into bed, naked and horny, I was usually in the middle of a meeting with a client or listening to a boring report from Ted about a subject I normally found endlessly intriguing, money. My money, to be exact. But the subject had lately lost some of its appeal, at least, when compared to the prospect of listening to Justin fucking his own ass from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Cynthia came in the door just as I snapped my phone shut. "Richard Bohling is here."

Richard had called a few days before from New York, saying he'd be in town on family business and wanted to discuss a new project with me while he was here. When Cynthia brought him in that afternoon, he sat down across from my desk with a friendly smile.

I gestured towards the liquor cart. "Can I get you a drink?"

He shook his head. "Nothing for me, thanks. How's Justin? Any new masterpieces on the horizon?"

I looked at him for a minute, and considered my response. "He's fine. He's in London right now." Then I smiled, although it wasn't very warm. "And if we're done with the polite chit chat, I'm curious about something myself. Since when did your family business expand into real estate development, or more succinctly, Richard, why are you trying to destroy Babylon?"

Richard sat back, expressionless. I'd seen a flicker of surprise on his face, though, so I knew I was right.

After a minute, he gave a gave a short laugh. "I'm not trying to destroy Babylon, Brian." When I raised an eyebrow, he shook his head. "I'm trying to buy it."

Now it was my turn to sit back. "Buy it? Have you ever heard of having your attorney send me an offer? Or isn't that how you do it in New York?"

Richard seemed to be choosing his words carefully. Good, I thought. He really hadn't known that I knew. "The last time I asked if you'd ever sell the club, you were pretty passionate about all the reasons you never would."

I vaguely remembered a long, heated diatribe on the gentrification of queer neighborhoods, with something about Olive Garden thrown in. I really had to learn to watch what I said when I was drunk. "Well, you're right. I'll never sell. And definitely not to you. So if that was the new business you wanted to talk about…" I stood up.

He just looked at me. "My father passed away last month."

"My condolences." I waited.

"My mother can't run the family business by herself."

Given that his "family business" was one of the largest investment firms in Pennsylvania, I wasn't surprised. "And…"

He shrugged. "I'm moving back to Pittsburgh, at least for a few years, to get things stabilized here. But running an investment company isn't me. I need something that is." He stood up, and put his hands in his pockets. "Which means either you sell Babylon to me, or I start another club."

I huffed a laugh. "You won't be the first person to try. The Pitts isn't New York, Richard. It can't support two clubs. Not the kind you're talking about."

He smiled, and I didn't like the look of it. "No, it can't. Which is why I want to buy Babylon. But if it's not for sale…."

"It's not."

He shrugged again. "Then I guess I _am_ out to destroy Babylon, Brian."

I leaned forward and pressed a button on my phone. "Cynthia, if you could show Richard out, he's just leaving."

He picked up his jacket, and looked at me. "Let me know if you change your mind."

I laughed. "I don't change my mind." Cynthia opened the door, and I made a gesture in her direction. "And in case you didn't know, I also don't lose."

After he was gone, I sat down at my desk and stared at the wall for a few minutes. When Cynthia came back in the room, Ted was right behind her.

I smiled at them. "It seems Richard Bohling won't be using our services for his next project after all."

Cynthia smiled like the killer she was at heart. "Well, this is going to be fun."

Ted, however, wasn't smiling. "This," he said morosely, "is going to be expensive."

I stood up and clapped him on the shoulder. "Where's your fighting spirit, Theodore? What's Richard Bohling have that I don't have?"

"Besides twenty years' experience running clubs in Manhattan and the financial resources of one of Pennsylvania's wealthiest families?"

I shook my head sadly. "Well, if you're going to start nitpicking…"

**Justin's POV**

I couldn't believe it when Brian told me the next day. "That asshole. And I was nice to him when he talked to me about my art, too."

Brian laughed. "You mean you thanked him when he told you that you're a genius?"

I ignored him. "You know, it's a compliment to you, really."

"What is?"

"Him wanting to buy Babylon, or shut it down. He knows you're the best."

"Yeah, well, I think it's more that he underestimated me. Which, unfortunately, he won't do again." 

I could hear the sound of a car door slamming. "Where are you?"

"I'm standing on the sidewalk – where it is, by the way, well over 100 degrees – outside the gym. I thought I'd direct all my pent-up competitive instincts into building bigger muscles and greater cardiovascular capacity."

"Good," I said, stuffing my laptop in my messenger bag and heading for the door. "I have plans for your muscles and your cardiovascular capacity when you get here."

He laughed. "Later."

"Later." 

That afternoon, I was in my studio trying to decide if there was enough blue in the red paint I was using, when a group of students came in. Sometimes visitors to the studio just watched, and other times they had a lot of questions. I usually ignored them, and let them make the first move. 

This group was curious and chatty, so I ended up spending a long time talking to them about the rise of abstract expressionism, not easy to do when Picasso appeared to be the only modern artist they'd ever heard of.

"Jackson Pollock? Gorky? de Kooning?" I asked.

They all shook their heads. I sighed, and tried again. "Kandinsky?"

Blank stares. And then I heard someone laughing from the door, and all the students turned around. "I hope you're Professor Bell's military history students, because otherwise I'm going to have to revisit our curriculum."

I grinned at Gillian, one of the professors who'd designed the art program and helped write the grant application that funded it. "No wonder they've only heard of Picasso."

She herded the students out to the lobby, and came back a few minutes later, something in her hand. "I was actually stopping by to give you this. Have you been to the BM yet?"

I shook my head. "I keep meaning to go. I want to see the Asian art exhibit. I know it has only two weeks left, but…"

She nodded. "Don't miss it. I think you'll be very surprised by some of what you see there. But in a completely different vein, don't miss the Great Masters exhibit that's opening at the end of October."

I looked at her. "You _are_ a history professor, I know, but …"

She laughed. "You think there's nothing left to learn from Michelangelo and da Vinci?"

She was reminding me of one of my teachers at PIFA. In fact, she was also reminding me of Lindsay. "Well, no, not exactly…"

Gillian smiled, and put the sheet of paper down on my worktable. "The information is here, including directions to the museum. And you're quite right, Justin, not to miss the Asian exhibit." She waved vaguely from the door, then turned around. "But don't miss the masters, either." Then she left.

I decided my red really didn't have enough blue, and went back to the sink to fix it.

When I was done mixing, I stared at my canvas. It was turning out just the way I wanted it to, but I was starting to wonder if I wanted it to do that. Sometimes I liked it better when my work surprised me.

After a while I went back to painting, chewing on my lower lip while I laid stroke after stroke of crimson red across the bottom of the canvas, thick and viscous. I touched some of the edges with black, and when I finished that, I knew that I was done. 

I cleaned my brushes, and picked up the brochure Gillian had left on my worktable. I read the directions to the British Museum, and then folded it and put it in my pocket.

I'd been going to museums since I was a kid. My mom had taken me in Pittsburgh, and when I was in my last year of junior high, she'd driven me down to New York, to the Guggenheim and the Met. When I moved to New York, I'd gone to the MOMA, and wandered around it for days until I'd seen everything – and then started over.

I'd assumed the BM would be a lot like the Met, but it wasn't. I walked over from the underground station, and the streets seemed so quiet, I thought I'd gotten lost. Then I got inside the building, and I did get lost. But there was always someone in a uniform to steer me where I wanted to go, and I finally found the Asian art exhibit.

I'd thought I'd just look at the paintings, figuring that I'd come back if there was anything else I wanted to see. But I never even got to them. I just stared at the porcelains, their impossible colors and glazes, their intricate designs. Some of it looked so modern I doubted the dates given in the catalog – most of it was older than America, older than the Renaissance.

I left the museum through a different door than the one I'd entered, and there were more businesses there. I found a restaurant and had dinner, thinking about how many of the techniques I'd learned in school, or tried to figure out on my own, resembled some of those nearly-thousand-year-old porcelain pieces.

I didn't feel like going back to the college. I felt like I wanted to be somewhere else that night, and it suddenly struck me that I really could do anything I wanted, go to a movie, or a club, or get on a plane and go to Paris or Rome, or even home. It was exhilarating and at the same time a little scary, to be free like that. 

London wasn't quite as "open all night" as New York was – as a very cold, long, late-night walk home had taught me. I later found out that there were places all over London where you could find cabs waiting, and even some late night bus lines, but I wasn't sure where those were yet. So I went back nearer to school, to a club I'd read about online. I felt like dancing to loud music, and sweating a little.

It had been a long time since I'd stood in line to get into a club, but after a few minutes, the bouncer jerked his head at me, and I went in. I wasn't sure if I was glad or sorry it was exactly like nearly every club I'd ever been to. There were two floors for dancing, and a small pub in the basement. I supposed it had a backroom or something like it, but I didn't bother checking.

I danced upstairs for a while, in a crowd of guys who would have fit right in at Babylon. It was the first time I'd been really warm in a week, and I closed my eyes and ignored everyone. I brushed a few guys' hands away, and moved to a different part of the dance floor when one didn't seem to understand what "fuck off" meant.

There was a cab right outside when I came out, and I was glad, because even under my jacket I could feel the cold air on my sweaty skin. When he let me out near campus, I ran from the sidewalk across the quad, and my hands were so cold I fumbled with my key at the door. 

When I got inside, it wasn't much warmer. I got into the shower and stood there, washing the sweat off my skin, bending over so I could rinse the shampoo out of my hair. The heated towel rack had warmed the bathroom up, and by the time I'd dried my hair, I was warm again. I decided if the building hadn't burned down in all these years, the space heaters were probably safe, so I'd just start leaving mine on when I went out.

I got into bed, and looked at my cell phone. Brian had called, but only once. There was nothing on my voice mail, and I briefly thought about checking email, or maybe just jerking off, but before the choice had finished crossing my mind, I'd fallen asleep.

**Brian's POV**

I'm sure Lindsay or Michael would be horrified if I admitted it, but if I'd known what nine months of nearly-unbroken celibacy would be like, it's possible I'd have suggested to Justin we wait a year before giving it a try. It's possible he might have felt the same. I certainly wasn't going to bring it up, especially since so far it had only been three and a half weeks, and really, you'd think that wouldn't be so bad.

You would, of course, be wrong. And the fact that when I got into bed it was 5 in the morning where Justin was didn't make things any easier. I'd woken him up once, but to say the resulting phone sex was less than stellar on his part would be too kind to him. So while I waited at JFK for my connecting flight, I amused myself by checking my schedule to see if it could accommodate somewhat more frequent trips to London than Justin and I had originally planned. 

My phone rang, and it was him. "Where are you?"

"Still in New York." It sounded like he was outdoors. "Where are you?"

"I'm in line to buy coffee." I heard him asking for it black, and then a slurping sound. Perhaps I'd plucked him from the bosom of his country club family a little too soon, before they'd quite finished smoothing away all the rough edges.

Just then they announced first class boarding for my flight. "That's me."

"Call me when you land. The minute they let you turn on your cell phone." 

I laughed. "Later."

I did call him when the plane landed, and then I called again when the driver said we were five minutes from his flat. He was standing on the sidewalk, and when he saw the car pulling up, his face lit up with that smile of his, and I was out of the car before it had stopped moving.

His arms and mouth touched me at the same instant, and I felt the shock of one and the warmth of the other, mixed with the taste and smell of Justin. 

A Justin who wasn't messing around, either, because his crotch was pressed tightly against mine, his tongue pulsing in my mouth. I got my hands into his hair and just held on, feeling my cock lengthening inside my jeans while Justin writhed against me.

I finally pulled our mouths apart, and looked down at the sidewalk. The driver had dumped my bag and driven off. I hadn't even tipped him, but the receipt was stuffed in the strap of the bag. I laughed, and then Justin was kissing me again, with frantic, biting kisses. 

I gripped his face, and touched our foreheads. "Do you have a bed nearby?"

He just laughed. "What's wrong with those bushes?" But he dragged me through an iron gate, down a path next to what looked like a park, and up the stairs of some building right out of a BBC drama. I didn't get much of a look inside before Justin was on me again, his hands opening my pants while I tugged his t-shirt up. 

His bare skin was hot under my hand, and his nipples were hard as I brushed my palms over them. Down his back, still smooth and dry, under the waistband of his jeans, my finger trailing into the crack of his ass. 

He bit my neck, and I tipped my head back, feeling his tongue flat and wet on the mark he'd made. My shirt was open, even though I hadn't noticed him unbuttoning it, and his hands were pressing me until I felt the door against my back. He licked and teased me, nipples, navel, lapping at every stomach muscle, nuzzling into my pubes. 

The first touch of his hand on my cock made me surge up, moaning. He followed it with his tongue on the vein and his fist on the base, then warm wet lips closing around it. I fucked his mouth, pulled his hair, and tried not to come down his throat the first time I bumped the back of it.

I felt his finger stroking behind my balls, and I gave up. I flooded into him, holding his face tight against me, my knuckles white, my teeth almost cutting into my lip. Every orgasm I'd had in the last three weeks suddenly seemed like a joke. 

I'd forgotten to breathe. I leaned back against the door while he kissed his way up my body, still frantic and hard, dripping into my hand when he pulled it to his cock. I ignored my shaking knees and spun him around, his back to the door this time, my mouth kissing down his body, biting his nipples, swallowing his cock. It was so fucking hard, blood beating against my lips, come leaking into my throat. I didn't use my hands, just pumped my mouth down on him, pubes against my lips, his stomach straining, hands pulling me against him. 

I tasted come on my tongue and moved my mouth down lower, letting it beat against the back of my throat instead, swallowing it, listening to Justin groan my name, feeling his fingers crushing into my head. And when he was done, I stayed on my knees in front of him, face resting against his stomach, the taste of him in my mouth.

Justin slid down the door and knelt in front of me, grinning. "So, how was your flight?"

I laughed. He stood up and tugged me to my feet, then waved his hand vaguely at the rest of the apartment. "This is the flat. The bathroom is at the back. My bed is behind you. Anything else you need to know?"

I turned us both around again, so I was facing the bed, and started walking him backwards towards it. "No, that about covers it."

He wrapped his arms around my neck and tried to leave his jeans behind while we walked. I kept him from falling, and kicked both our pants and shoes away just as his legs hit the bed. I pushed him back, and fell on top of him, my cock getting hard again. 

I fucked him, his legs wrapped around my back, his fingers digging painfully into my thighs. And when we'd both come, and I was lying there on top of him panting, he started to laugh.

I lifted my head. "What?"

"God, I miss that."

I let my head drop down, and felt my heart still hammering in my chest. "No shit."

That first night, I fell asleep when Justin did, even though it was five hours later for him than it was for me. When I woke up, he wasn't there, and I followed him into the bathroom. He smiled at me from the deep tile tub, then bent over and rinsed his hair. When he stood up, he laughed at the expression on my face.

"You have to be kidding."

"It won't kill you." 

That was debatable, but after I showered and drank the coffee he'd made, I looked at him across the small table in front of his one window. "It's bigger than your place in New York, and cleaner than that hovel you rented in the Pitts."

He nodded. "It's kind of shitty, but I'm not here much. And the studio's beautiful."

I sipped my coffee. "So you've said."

After breakfast, we walked over there, my arm around his shoulder. It was warm and the sun was out, and the garden across from his building was full of flowers. "Is there a gate?"

He nodded. "The people staying in these flats have a key, and the people who live on the second floor – which, by the way, the British call the first floor, for reasons no one has been able to explain to me yet – but the students aren't supposed to use it." We came to a long, low brick building, something like a warehouse in design, with big, black-painted double doors. We went in through the one single door, and I stopped, shocked.

It was built on the edge of a tree-filled ravine, and stairs led down to a lower level that almost seemed like it was hanging over the trees and empty space. The windows reached from the floor to the ceiling, and the ceiling itself was almost entirely glass. I looked at Justin and he was grinning. "Wait until you see my space."

He pulled me down the stairs and to the left, and into a non-descript metal door marked with the number 12. And then we walked into a room just like the public space we'd passed through, ceiling and wall of windows, no view but the trees and, far below, a stream.

I shook my head and looked at him. "No wonder you don't care about the flat being small and dark. Do you do anything there but sleep?"

"Not really." 

I looked around. There was a sink in the corner, with his familiar paints and brushes on the shelves above it. There was a worktable in the middle of the room, and paintings resting against the blank wall across from the windows. I walked over and looked at the two that were leaning there.

One was a misty greenish-gray collision of angles and shapes, all falling away into a formless background. It should have been peaceful, but instead it was just a little disorienting – something I'd come to see as a familiar theme in his work.

The other was more clearly a Justin Taylor piece, black and red and thickly painted. It was a fairly large canvas, and I looked at it for a long time, trying to put my finger on what was wrong with it.

He stood next to me, hand on my back. "What do you think?"

"That one…" I gestured at the first painting… "is beautiful. I'm not sure about this one. What do _you_ think?"

He tipped his head. "I haven't decided yet."

He had another painting on his worktable, but he'd barely started it. I turned back to the gray-green painting, but he was pulling me towards the door. "Let's see if Shen's studio is open. His stuff is amazing."

We went to the other end of the building, and Justin knocked on the closed door. There wasn't any answer, but he opened it just a crack and said something I didn't catch.

I followed him in after an equally unintelligible response from whoever was inside, and for the second time in one morning, stopped abruptly.

This space was identical to Justin's, but instead of paintings, paint, easels, and color everywhere, there were three gigantic white balls of what looked like cement, each one bigger than the other, the largest at least 12 feet in diameter.

A tall man, his long legs tucked awkwardly into the rungs of a ladder, was sitting next to the largest one, a paintbrush in one hand, and a deep plastic bowl in the other. He didn't seem curious about who I was, just nodded once at Justin and went back to his work. 

I walked around the three globes a few times, and watched the artist moving his brush in small strokes. Nothing changed; it looked like he was sealing or glazing the surface. Justin was watching, too, and I raised a brow in his direction. 

He crossed over to me. "This is Shen Chao, from Beijing. He doesn't speak English."

I'd figured that out. "Did you say something to him in Chinese?"

He shrugged. "Sort of. He had a translator here when he did his presentation, and I emailed him and asked him to tell me how to say a couple of things." He glanced up at the man, who still didn't seem to know we were here. "I'm sure I fucked the pronunciation up totally. But it just seemed rude not to try."

I almost laughed; it was so totally Justin, to try to learn to say something in Chinese, when the guy could have learned what "May I come in?" means and thus, been able to talk to the river of students who no doubt poured into his studio as much as they did Justin's.

On the other hand, he probably spoke perfect English, but had figured out the best way to be left the fuck alone. I regarded him with new respect as Justin herded me out of the room.

**Justin's POV**

I knew that, other than looking at my studio, we'd basically do nothing but fuck the first few days he was here. And we did. I'd bought as much food as my tiny kitchen could hold, and it took us three days to run out of it.

Brian was sprawled across my back, lazily drawing little figures all over it with his finger. I wasn't sure if I was waking up or falling asleep, and I had no idea if it was day or night, either. "What time is it?"

I was staring at the clock, so he didn't answer me right away. When he did, his voice was irritatingly patient. "The big hand is on the three, and the little hand is on the…"

I swatted him. "I mean, AM or PM?"

He heaved himself onto his side and looked towards the window, but we'd closed the shades and curtains a couple of days before. He made a martyred sound and got out of bed, stalking over to the table and pulling the curtains open. It didn't get any lighter in the room, so I wasn't surprised when he rolled up the shade and it was dark outside.

I groaned. "We're out of food and it's the middle of the night."

"Can't we go out?"

I shook my head. "This isn't New York. It's not even Pittsburgh. There isn't one place nearby that's open this late. Early. Whatever."

Brian was staring at me. "That's impossible. This is a college."

"I'm aware."

He gave yet another martyred sigh. "I thought London was the cradle of western civilization?"

I bit my thumbnail. "No doubt why the Empire fell, a shocking lack of 24-hour diners."

He was frowning. "Where's your laptop?"

He booted it up, and I pissed while he found as many 24-hour restaurants in the entire city of London as there were within five blocks of my old apartment in New York. "This one has pancakes, omelets, and good coffee. That sounds like a diner to me."

I walked up behind him, and patted his head. "Take 'good coffee' somewhat less than literally."

It actually wasn't bad, although we had to wait for a table. No one there seemed to know or care that we were two guys who couldn't seem to stop touching each other, which was a good thing since I didn't feel like letting go of Brian's hand just because the very gay waiter asked us what we wanted to eat.

The menu was limited at that hour, but we managed to stave off starvation until the next afternoon. I made Brian come with me to London's one and only Whole Foods, where we put three hundred dollars worth of groceries on his platinum card. "That should hold us until tomorrow," he said as he signed at the checkout stand.

We were eating organic take-out… "Take-away," I told him; there was no such thing as "take-out" in London… on the floor in front of the sofa, because I had no coffee table. 

Brian was regarding the space heater dubiously. "What the fuck is that?" He shoveled a forkful of pasta salad in his mouth. 

"An electric fireplace."

He was staring at me over the takeout container. "What the fuck?"

I shrugged. "You asked. That's what they call it."

He looked at it for a while. "Turn it on."

I hadn't had it on since he'd gotten there, since the cold snap had passed, and besides, he and I had better ways to keep warm. But I obligingly scooted over and flipped the switch.

The fake flames started flickering, the fake coals started glowing, and the noisy heater kicked on. Brian fell over on his back laughing.

I crawled over to him. "Hey, I didn't decorate this place, and when it's January, you'll be fucking glad it's here."

He pulled me so I was lying half on top of him. "That is so cheesy."

"Fuck you." I bit his jaw line, right next to a hickey I'd left there earlier that day. And then I kept licking and biting his neck and chest, burrowing into his shirt while my fingers undid the buttons on his pants, and tugged them off him.

Brian let himself arch under my mouth, and I dragged my tongue down his chest, outlining every muscle, dipping into his belly button. He had his hands in my hair, and was trying to push my mouth towards his dick, but I resisted. He lifted up his head and looked at me, and I said, "Roll over."

I kept my hand on his hip while he did, and then let it slip underneath him to grasp his cock. I was licking down his crack, pulling him open with my other hand, while he humped against my palm.

His hole was tight, and I wriggled the tip of my tongue in it until I felt it soften. I made my tongue stiff and pressed it inside, and Brian moaned and shifted back against my mouth, lifting up onto his knees a little.

I got a better grip on his cock, but pulled my tongue out of his ass and started lapping at the spot behind his balls. He pressed back some more, and I used one of my fingers to keep massaging that spot while I went back to licking his ass. 

My fingers were light on his dick, just enough to gauge his reaction, but not enough to get him off. I worked one of my fingers in next to my tongue, and he groaned as I stretched him with my knuckle. I felt my cock getting rigid in my jeans, but I ignored it.

I blew on his hole, then licked it again, then pulled back and let a second finger play in the wetness I'd left there. 

"Fuck, Justin…" he was throbbing in my hand, and rocking against my fingers, and I felt a rush wash over me, desire and something like power. I eased my fingers out of him, and sat back on my heels, opening my jeans. Brian looked at me over his shoulder for a second, then rested his forehead on his bent arm.

I stood up to take off my jeans and my shirt, and get the lube from next to the bed. I knelt down next to him, and slicked my fingers before sliding them in again. He was still up on his knees, but not very much, and I rested my hand on the small of his back while I watched my fingers move inside him. I watched his hole stretch open and then close around my knuckles, and I felt that rush again. 

I leaned over and rested my forehead on his back, and gently laid the tip of a third finger at his opening. Brian shifted higher on his knees, and when I felt his hole soften, I pulled back the first two and then moved my fingers inside again, this time all three of them, tightly woven together.

It was tight, and I could feel him straining against me, and then my knuckles were inside. I shook the hair out of my eyes and carefully let my fingers open inside him, and his cock jerked in my hand. I touched the tip, and it was dripping.

I fucked him slowly, watching every muscle in his shoulders straining, his hips moving back when I pulled my fingers out a little, then angling to take me deeper when I thrust them back in. I splayed them out as I felt him get looser, and Brian gave a gasp when I brushed across his prostate.

His cock in my other hand was dripping. I wanted to fuck him, but I wanted something else more. I let my pinkie touch his hole, and Brian froze.

I'd never had more than three fingers inside him. He'd fucked me with four, lots of times, and I knew it felt amazing, but the first time he'd pressed all four knuckles inside me it had hurt like hell. But I wanted to do it to him anyway, wanted to know what it felt like to have that tight ass spasming around my fingers. And I wanted him to come the way he made me come when he had four fingers all the way inside me, brushing my prostate while his other hand jerked me off… fuck. I wasn't even touching my own dick, and the thought was making me drip.

I didn't ask him if he was okay. I knew he was when he shifted back against my hand again, all that stillness suddenly gone, replaced by urgency. I let go of his cock and got more lube, letting it run over my hand and his balls, making everything slippery. I pulled my fingers out and worked them in again, making sure he was loose and wet. And then I rested just the tip of that fourth finger at his hole, and slid it in alongside the others. He breathed out and pushed back, and when I felt my knuckle hit the rim, I stopped.

My hand was on his hip, and I held him still. "Let me." He nodded once against his arm, but didn't look back or move. I pressed gently but steadily against the resistance, and I could feel his muscles pushing back, and the stretch and give of his asshole, and then I felt the ring… so fucking tight… slide over my last knuckle.

It was so tight I couldn't move my fingers at all. There was no way I could fuck him like this; I couldn't do anything. I put my other hand back on his cock, and it was only half-hard. I kissed his shoulder and murmured his name, and I felt him move, relax, just the tiniest bit, but it was enough that his ass unlocked around my fingers.

I moved them, just the tips, just a flutter, and Brian shouted, his cock jerking and filling in my hand. I was still wet with lube, and I let myself jerk him hard while I fluttered my fingers again. This time he didn't shout, and he didn't relax. His ass locked on my knuckles, so tight I couldn't move at all, nothing, but it didn't matter because his cock was spurting thick ropes of come underneath him, and he was groaning my name, his voice hoarse.

He finally stopped, and I could feel his heart thudding through his back, against my cheek. 

And then I slowly, gently moved my fingers again, and he said, "God…" and I smiled, my sweaty forehead against his sweaty back, swirling my fingertips over his prostate while he came again, hard and almost dry in my palm.

This time I'd eased my fingers back while he was still coming, and I let my pinkie slip out. He was taking deep, shuddering breaths, and I moved my wet hand off his cock and held his hip still again, slowly easing my fingers out of him. And when I was done, he dropped flat and then rolled over, pulling me against him. I pressed my aching cock into the slick mess on his stomach and let myself hump him, slipping back and forth in the wetness on his smooth skin, until I came, too, burning liquid between our bodies.

I don't know how long we lay there, but he finally just said, "Fuck."

I smiled, and kissed his shoulder. "So, what are you going to tell people when they ask you how you liked London?"

He wriggled his jaw a little, then glanced down at me. "London… world class city. Great shops, galleries, and of course, the theater."

I grinned up at him. "Of course. Despite the fact that we barely left the flat except to shop at Whole Foods and eat at the closest thing we could find to a diner, and that other than that, all we did was fuck."

"You say that," he said, "like it's a bad thing."

I laughed, and felt him brush his hand through my hair, then rest it on the back of my neck. "You have to admit, it's not exactly the London experience."

He considered for a minute. "What's your favorite place in London… besides in your bed with my dick up your ass, or your studio with a brush in your hand?"

"The British Museum." 

He made a face. "I'm not going to a museum on my last day in London. What haven't you seen that you'd like to?"

It was my turn to consider. "I don't know…"

"Big Ben? The Tower of London?"

I shook my head, laughing. "Eeuuww. No."

"The changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace?"

I laughed again. "Who am I, Christopher Robin?"

"Well, what, then?"

"No museums?"

He shook his head violently. "Next time."

"St. Paul's Cathedral, and I want to walk across the bridge near it." My voice was firm.

"You want to spend my last day in London in a church?" He sounded disbelieving. 

"It's an architectural masterpiece, not a church."

"And you want me to walk across a river after what you just did to my ass?"

I bit him. "Oh please. You loved it."

He kissed my hair. "Fine. St. Paul's it is. But you owe me."

I laughed. "Jesus, Brian. You already owe me, like, fifty thousand blow jobs."

He smiled, and shoved me off him. "Forty-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine." And then he stood up and headed for the bathroom.

**Brian's POV**

Justin insisted we start at the Tate Gallery, and I ignored his wistful glances at it. He could go gaze at the modern masters after I left. We walked across the bridge, and he chattered about post-war construction and some architecture contest to design the bridge we were on, and I began to regret letting him get near a history college. But as we got closer to the far side of the bridge, he got much quieter.

Whatever cold spell London had before I got there, it was beautiful that day, warm with a fall breeze, the river moving under the bridge. I felt an impulse to hold his hand, so I did, and at first I thought he just didn't notice. But his fingers squeezed mine, and I saw his eyes shining as we stopped and looked at the cathedral in the distance.

I stood behind him, with my arms wrapped around him. "This is very London-ish."

He laughed a little, and tipped his head back and looked at me. "There's nothing like this in Pittsburgh, I agree. It almost makes up for the funny electrical outlets, the inadequate heating systems, and the way they call band-aids 'plasters' and drugstores 'chemists.'"

"It's amazing how you manage to soldier on," I told him.

"Then there's the lack of sex."

"Now, that's a tragedy, as I've learned all too well."

"On the other hand, there's Europe. I mean, I could go to Paris for the weekend, if I wanted to." 

He started walking again, but I caught his hand. "Wanna go to Paris for the weekend?"

He stopped and looked at me. "You're leaving tomorrow."

I shrugged. "I can come back. We can meet in Paris."

He smiled. "A weekend? All we'll do is fuck, and never see Paris."

"Hmmm. True. Four days?"

He looked at me, hard. "Can you get away for four days? With everything going on at Babylon?"

"I think so." He looked skeptical, so I tried again. "I'll clear four days on my schedule as soon as I get home."

He laughed, and yanked me after him as he started walking again. "Fine. _After_ we see St. Paul's Cathedral."

I snorted, but followed him to the other side of the river.


	4. Directions, Chapter 4

**Directions, Chapter Four**  
By Xie

 _"Each man has his own vocation; his talent is his call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him."_ \- Ralph Waldo Emerson

**Brian's POV**

When I got home from London, I went to the loft and crashed. But my body seemed to be stuck in some strange time zone between there and Pittsburgh, and I woke up at four in the morning. I decided even going to work was better than staring at the rafters over my bed, so I went to Kinnetik.

I was staring at my laptop screen when Cynthia walked in. She didn't bother welcoming me back, just marched up to the desk. "Good. You're here. You have a meeting with Ted and me at 8 o'clock."

I glanced at the clock. "It's 7:57 right now."

Ted walked in the door, a latte in his hand. He set it down in front of me. "Good morning, Bri. I'd ask how London was, but I'm really not that interested in what the ceiling of Justin's apartment looks like."

I looked at him. "I was just thinking that the problem with coming in early is there are no minions available to send on a Starbucks run, and here you are. Although if I recall correctly, Theodore, I pay you to micromanage my vast financial empire, not bring me coffee."

He ignored me. "Pittsburgh Out just published an interview with Bohling."

I raised an eyebrow. "Apparently it's a slow news month in the Pitts."

"He bought the old icehouse and says he's opening on New Year's Eve."

I frowned. "That's a block in the wrong direction off Liberty."

Cynthia nodded. "He either doesn't know or doesn't care. Either way, good news for us."

I got up, walked over to the sofa and sat down, looking at her curiously. "When did _you_ join Team Babylon?"

She shrugged. "I figure you'll either bankrupt Kinnetik to save Babylon…" I snorted, but she went on. "Or you'll be so distracted that nothing will get done around here." She paused. "Plus I want to grind that asshole into the dirt."

I nodded. "I like your spirit."

"Yeah, well, you won't like the storyboards for the new ad campaign." Ted spread them on the low table in front of the sofa. "They suck."

"Yes, they do," Cynthia agreed, looking over his shoulder.

"Long and hard," Ted said.

"Actually, it's more like short, sloppy, and with teeth." I rubbed my forehead.

Ted turned the storyboards upside down. "It's unanimous."

I stood up and went and got some water off the table near my desk. I wanted something stronger, but I thought it might have sent the wrong message to the staff to see the boss drinking at eight in the morning. "I'd say to fire the idiot who came up with the campaign if it wasn't me."

"You could fire the art department," Ted suggested.

I shook my head. "It's not their fault. Expecting good art to make up for a bad idea is for amateurs."

Cynthia stood up. "Richard has to know we're going to do a campaign."

I snorted. "Of course he does, just like we know he is." I looked at her. "The ads aren't the campaign. They're supposed to advance the campaign. We need a plan."

Ted didn't look happy. "This is gonna cost a fortune."

"It'll make us a fortune if we win." I sat down at my desk. "We're both competing for a limited market of men with absolutely no brand loyalty, who don't give a flying fuck about anything except dancing, hot guys, lots of booze, loud music, lighting that makes them feel like they're on drugs even when they're not, and getting their dicks sucked."

Ted frowned. "In short, an entire community made up of guys just like Brian Kinney."

I considered. "Well, not as hot. And with smaller dicks."

Cynthia tapped the pile of storyboards with one fingernail. "But Brian… wouldn't you be at the new club, too?"

I nodded. "Of course."

She sat back in her chair. "We're fucked."

I wrapped up the meeting on that uplifting note, but after Ted and Cynthia were gone, I sat staring at the wall for a long time. I'd never actually had a good idea come to me while I was sitting in the office, so I stood up and went to the gym.

If the Lifecycle were a real bike, I'd have probably been halfway to Toronto when my cell phone rang. "Mikey."

"Whatcha doing?"

I frowned. "Okay, who told you to call, Theodore or your mother?"

He paused for a second. "Justin."

I rubbed between my eyes. "Justin. Justin called you from London and told you to call me?"

"More of a general email that I'm supposed to be watching over you from a distance." The asshole was laughing.

"Well, tell him you've done your best-friendly duty and I'm fine." I got off the bike, grabbed my towel, and mopped at my wet face.

"That's what I've _been_ doing. But now he's insisting on a minimum of face time. So dinner. Tonight. 7 PM."

"Mikey…"

"Ben's in New York for a conference and Hunter went with him. Come keep me company."

"Will there be drugs?"

He laughed again. "Sure. If you bring them."

I headed for Michael's after work, and got there at the same time as the pizza delivery guy. He paid him, and I took the pizza to the table. And stopped, because it was covered with Rage drawings I'd never seen.

I dumped the pizza box on a clear spot and flipped through them. "Justin sent you these?"

Michael came out of the kitchen and handed me a beer. "Yeah. It's hard working like this, but we couldn't go nine months without an issue." He took a swallow of his beer.

I nodded, surprised. I don't know why. Justin would probably be drawing Rage when he was 90 and his paintings were hanging in museums in every major city in the world.

I drank some beer and put two slices of pizza on a plate. So much for my hour on the stationary bike. "So, what's next for our hero?"

We went into the living room, and Michael was grinning. "Wouldn't _you_ like to know."

"Fuck you." I took some pot out of my pocket and tossed it on the coffee table before sitting down. "And don't think I haven't noticed that Zephyr and JT have both been getting more buff and super-powerful lately."

Michael took a bite of his pizza. "Why would Rage hang out with a couple of losers who never change and grow?"

I snorted. "Why, indeed?"

Michael ignored me. "Anyway, after regaining his sanity, Rage now has to rebuild his lair. But someone – or something – seems to be sabotaging it." He ate some more pizza.

"And?"

"Well, that would be telling."

I put down my empty plate and started to roll a joint. "I hate you."

Michael nodded. "I know."

I grinned at him. "Always have. Always will." I put the joint between my lips, lit it, and sucked in a lungful. I held it as long as I could, then blew the smoke out in a stream and handed it to him.

We got stoned and ate pizza, and then he sat on the kitchen counter while I dug in his cabinets until I found a bottle of scotch. "Here it is." I held it high. "Unopened. Of course." I remedied that, took a long swallow, wiped the rim and handed it to him by the neck.

He choked on a tiny mouthful. "How can you drink this stuff?"

I took it back. "It's my birthright." I took another drink. "Like cheap wine and marinara sauce are yours."

Michael jumped down off the counter and we went back into the living room. A little while later, he was sitting on the sofa and I was lying on the floor, the half-empty bottle next to me.

He poked me with his foot. "So, I guess you miss Justin."

I stared at him. "Is this going to be a therapy session? Because if it is, I'm going to need another bottle."

He shrugged. "It's just the longest you've gone without sex since… well… ever, I guess. I just wondered how you were handling it."

I snorted. "Oh, I'm _handling it_ all right." I looked up at him sideways. "And that's all I'm doing, if that's what you're asking."

He shook his head. "No. I know. You don't have to tell me." He reached down for the bottle, and grinned at me while he took a swallow. "I just figured monogamy with Justin in town is one thing, but with him on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, your dick might fall off or something."

"Monogamy turned out not to be so bad." I took the bottle back. "But celibacy sucks just as bad as I always thought it would." I eyed the level of scotch, and drank another mouthful.

Michael watched me drink. "I'm hungry again."

I nodded. "Me, too."

He jumped up. "I have an idea. What about, instead of eating all the microwave popcorn, cereal, and chocolate chip cookies in the house, we check out that restaurant Emmett's so hot on, get plastered at Woody's, and make a spectacle of ourselves on the dance floor at Babylon?"

"Mikey?" I lifted my head off the floor. "Did you just call me pathetic?"

"Of course not." He held out his hand and I let him tug me up. Then he grinned. "Although…"

I frowned at him. "Quit while you're ahead, Mikey."

We ended up eating at the diner, and then replenished our blood alcohol levels at Woody's before Babylon.

"Is it married men's night at Babylon and no one told me?" It was Emmett, arm draped around his latest beau, or maybe just some guy he'd met ten minutes before. I never bothered to keep track.

"Fuck you." I raised a glass to him.

I didn't feel like dancing, but Michael danced with Emmett while I leaned on the bar. I watched the timing of the lights, hearing myself counting it down in my head. I listened to the new sound system, wondering if it was worth the fortune we'd spent on it. And while the bartender quietly kept my glass full, I looked at the walls and catwalks, the girders and beams, the glass and steel, all vibrating with the beat of the music and the movement of hundreds of men, shirtless, dancing.

I heard something, and shook my head. "What?"

It was Michael, sweaty and laughing. "You're drunk."

"I think I'll join him." Emmett came up to the bar on the other side of me, and ordered a Cosmo.

After he got his drink, Emmett turned to face me. "So, Brian, I read about this new club opening at the old icehouse on New Year's Eve. Did you know about this?"

I snorted. "Of course." I put my empty glass on the bar, and shook my head when the bartender tried to refill it. "He's a client. A _former_ client."

Michael looked worried. "What are you going to do?"

"About what?"

"The competition."

The lights changed color, and the beat of the music picked up. "Ah. That."

Emmett swirled his drink around inside the glass. "Yeah, Brian. Do you have a secret plan? Tell me, tell me!"

I looked from his face to Michael's, and laughed. "I need some air. Come on."

We started to head for the exit, but I veered towards the stairs.

"Ummm, Brian?" It was Emmett. "I thought you wanted fresh air?"

"I do." I turned down the hallway towards the office, and one of the security staff nodded at me.

I turned the corner and opened a door, and gestured them through. "Ladies first."

Michael knew where we were going; he and Justin had been up here one day plotting something for Rage. There was a flight of stairs with a door at the top, and outside of that was the rooftop.

And beyond that, the Pittsburgh skyline, and the web of bridges that crisscrossed the river.

Emmett stopped abruptly, his drink sloshing onto the ground. "I've never been up here."

Michael was staring at the lights. "I've only been up here in the daytime. This is incredible."

I felt drunk and high. I could hear the music vibrating up through my feet, and the cold air bit my throat when I took a breath. I tipped back my head, and laughed.

**Justin's POV**

I resisted the metaphorical impact as long as I could, but there was no denying the simple fact that the day Brian left London was the last warm day of the year. It was cold. It rained. Half the time the rain turned to sleet. And I realized that walls of glass are great for letting in light but did make it hard to keep my studio warm. I'd had to ask the building manager, Caroline, for a space heater to keep near my feet when I was working.

Once we were a week into November, I realized something else: it was weird being in a country that didn't have Thanksgiving. I wouldn't have expected that would be one of the little culture shocks that still hit me after two months in London, but it was.

"It's the gateway to the Christmas season," I explained to Jense and Mark while we were having a drink at a pub near the university. "Everything feels… different after Thanksgiving."

Jense nodded. "When I was there, they had snowmen and trees in the store windows in September."

I snorted. "At Brian's advertising agency, they're already working on holiday campaigns in March."

"America." She had that tone in her voice that meant we'd failed as a nation and a people.

"Please," I said. "Look at the fashion magazines, or go to Milan or Paris. What kind of clothing do you see in spring? The fall collections. It's the same everywhere. It's all about marketing."

Mark put down his beer. "Everywhere and everything. Including us, here."

"Us here what?" Caroline dropped into one of the empty chairs.

I stood up to get another beer. "Rampant commercialism and the great capitalist scourge that is America."

Caroline laughed. "Oh, that. Again?"

I went to get us all another round, and when I got back to the table Jense was giggling. "I don't know. Ask Justin, he'll know."

I sat down. "Know what?"

Caroline regarded me seriously. "Do you think Shen is gay?"

I shook my head. "Nope."

Jense was looking at me. "No pings on the gaydar, then?"

"Not a single blip." I sipped my beer. "Why?"

Mark laughed. "Because Caro fancies him, but he's not picking up on her signals."

She hit his arm. "Bugger off."

I thought about it, and shook my head again. "No way."

Jense looked skeptical. "Are you sure it's not just that he doesn't fancy you, so you can't read him?"

"Please. There are plenty of guys who don't think I'm hot and I can still tell they're gay." I paused. "Well, not _plenty_ of guys…"

Caroline rolled her eyes. "So you think I have a chance?"

"How the fuck do I know? But he's not gay."

Jense was shaking her head again. "No, really, maybe he just knows you're married and he doesn't go for married men…"

I shrugged. "Or maybe he's married, with a wife and kids back home in Beijing."

Caro shook her head. "He's single, I know that for sure."

Mark and I were both laughing. "You know," he said, "you could just ask him."

Caroline looked confused. "If he's gay?"

"No, stupid." It was Jense. "If he'd like to go out with you."

Caro made a face. "What if he says no?"

Jense stood up. "I have no idea how you British ever manage to get laid at all." She tugged at Mark's arm. "Let's go."

"Hey," he objected. "I'm not finished."

She looked at him patiently. "As I said, I don't know how you British ever manage to get laid."

He looked surprised, then put his glass down. "Oh. Right." He stood up and started pulling on his coat.

Caroline and I finished our beers, then headed back towards the university. She turned up the collar of her coat. "It's bloody freezing."

I nodded. "I left my space heater on. I hope the building didn't burn down."

She frowned. "The electric fire?"

"Yeah."

"It turns itself off if it gets too hot. They're perfectly safe." She changed the subject. "When are you leaving for Paris?"

"Wednesday."

"Have you been before?"

I nodded. "But only with my parents and little sister, when I was 14."

She laughed. "Oh, well, you've never really been, then. It's lovely; I envy you." We went through the gate onto the campus, and she glanced at me. "So, you really don't think Shen is gay?"

"No, but that doesn't mean he's not. Some guys hide it. Or it could be a cultural thing."

She nodded. "Maybe he's just shy."

I shoved my hand through my hair. "God, just ask him."

She snorted. "Maybe _I'm_ just shy."

We stopped in front of my door. "What's the worst thing that can happen if you ask him?"

"He'll say no, and then I'll be embarrassed for the next seven months until he leaves."

I thought about it. "The gut-ripping agony of rejection subsides after a couple of months."

Caroline laughed. "I suppose it does."

When I got inside, I changed into paint-crusted jeans and an old sweatshirt and then headed out to the studio. I was the youngest artist in the residency program. I was the youngest artist they'd ever invited. But I was surrounded by students who were all younger than me, and sometimes I felt old, or at least, out of step with everyone else.

I hesitated, and looked at my canvas. I chewed my lip for a minute, then sat down and pulled out my sketchbook. I'd sent Michael some drawings for the next issue of Rage, but I'd had an idea…

The next thing I knew, it was late. I wasn't sure what time, exactly, but it was so silent it had to be three or four in the morning.

I rolled my neck and tried to relax my shoulders, and was suddenly overwhelmed by a need for sleep. This was why I had a sofa in my studio at home. I wondered what Caroline would do if she got here in the morning and found me sound asleep on one of the sofas in the lobby.

It was cold out, the sky so clear even the light from the stars was steady, unblinking. I stood at the railing along the ravine, to the right of the studio building, and could hear the water rushing below.

I dug my phone out of my pocket and dialed Brian's number. When he answered, I could hear music in the background. "Are you at Babylon?" He'd been there a lot lately, trying to come up with an idea for the ad campaign.

"Yeah… with Emmett."

I heard a scuffling sound, and then Emmett's voice. "Hi, baby! What time is it there?"

I looked at the time on my phone. "Almost four in the morning."

Brian got the phone back. "Are you horny, or in an artistic frenzy?"

I laughed, and sat down on a bench next to the railing. "The latter."

"Too bad." His voice was rough and I felt a tightening in my pants. "Should I call when I get home?"

"No… I'm going to try to sleep."

I snapped the phone shut, and stared into the absolute blackness of the ravine for a while. I was still tired. In fact, I was pretty sure a big part of my brain was already asleep. But another part was awake, crystal-sharp, and wanting something. Not to eat, or even to keep painting; I wanted skin and tongue and hands and cock.

I jammed my phone back in my pocket and walked the rest of the way down the path to my flat. Maybe I'd call Brian back, I thought. I stripped off my clothes and slid into my bed, my phone in my hand. But the next thing I knew it was morning, and my phone was lying open on the bed next to me.

I jerked off in the shower, feeling the hot water ease the stiffness in my neck while my cock throbbed against my palm. The tile wall had felt cold under my hand, but it was heating up now, hot water beading on it then splashing back onto my skin.

I moved a little, shifting to get some pressure inside, where everything was throbbing and starting to pull together into one spot, a space and emptiness slowly filling up with heat. I heard my breathing, louder than the sound of the shower, and then I came into my hand and on the tile wall.

After I dried my hair, I ran out to the kiosk for a coffee and something to eat. Mark had laughed when I told him I liked the food at the kiosk. "It's horrible," he'd said. "Complete junk."

I'd just swallowed the last bite of a little pastry stuffed with meat, and recommended he never, ever eat in America if he thought this was "complete junk."

The heat from the coffee cup warmed my hands by the time I got to the studio. I stood at the window in the lobby looking at the ravine that had been so black the night before. It was flooded with light, and I was sure there were all kinds of Disney-esque birds and woodland creatures splashing in the stream.

"The light is very bright, good." It was Shen.

I smiled at him, sipping my coffee. "Hard to believe this is right in the center of the city."

He looked at it. "It is much of nature, not like park."

I nodded. "That's what I like about it." Then I laughed. "Through a window from a warm room."

He didn't seem to understand what I'd said, so I tried again. "I like nature better when I'm warm inside, looking through the window."

Shen nodded and turned back to the view, but didn't say anything more.

I left him there and went into my studio. I took off my jacket and stood looking at the painting on my easel. It was a large piece, gray and foreboding, the foreground blurred and organic and the background graphic and sharp, like an unfocused photograph.

"This is strong."

I jumped at the sound of Shen's voice from behind me; I hadn't heard him come in. His finger brushed past the one place in the field where the lines pulled the eye, where the organic form collapsed a little on itself.

He was still looking at it, and finally nodded. "Very good."

"Thanks." I walked over to the sink and pulled my paints and brushes down off the shelves. When I turned around he was gone.

I was putting a final surface coat on the painting an hour or two later, and thought about Shen's artwork. Unlike every other artist in the residency, he was doing a single project, the three plaster spheres with their cloud-like glazed surfaces.

It hadn't taken him long to create the three spheres, each one larger than the one before. But I'd watched him applying color to one of them one day, and no matter how hard I tried to see what he was doing, it was like he was painting with water, or air. And yet every few days I realized more and more of the surface was rippling with color, fragile and translucent but unmistakably there. And then I began to wonder if even nine months would be long enough.

I leaned the painting against the wall to dry, and went to find some lunch. I really should have worked on some drawings for Rage next, but I had an open studio that afternoon, so I thought I'd try to think of something more artistic to be working on if anyone came in.

**Brian's POV**

Four days in Paris was a better idea than reality.

Well, I was sure that the reality of being in Paris with Justin would be fine. It was the reality of finding four days where I could make that happen that was the problem. I had plenty of disposable income; it was disposable time I was short on.

I'd emailed Justin and told him Thanksgiving weekend was the first time I was going to be able to get back to Europe, and asked what kind of hotel he wanted to stay at in Paris, agonizingly hip or painfully luxurious. His reply was just one word: "Luxurious."

The day after I'd taken Emmett and Michael up on the roof at Babylon, I'd dragged Ted up there and told him what I had in mind. He wandered around, made a few notes, and said he was going to call the contractor who'd remodeled the expansion of Kinnetik.

I groaned. "He took forever and cost a fortune."

"All contractors take forever and cost a fortune." He jotted something else down. "He did a great job." Then he paused. "I'm not sure he'll do the work unless we put it in writing that he never has to speak with you again."

"That's not a deal breaker, if he can get it done by spring."

I let Ted handle the contractor, permit applications, and architect, and concentrated on what I did best: advertising.

Well, I did it best for my clients, all of whom were currently very happy. I needed final art for the Babylon campaign by the end of the first week in December, and still had no fucking idea what that campaign would be.

"Do you think celibacy damages the brain?"

Michael didn't look up from the diner menu. "I wouldn't know."

I sighed. "You say that now Ben's back in town."

Debbie came up to the table, balancing a plate on each hand and another on each forearm. She yelled over her shoulder, "Betty, honey, can you get the boys' order?"

Betty scurried over with her order pad. When she was gone, Michael was looking at me with a strange expression on his face.

"What?"

"Why did you ask about celibacy affecting your brain?"

I shrugged. "Just a campaign I can't come up with an idea for."

Debbie re-appeared, coffee pot in hand. "So, did you hear about that new club opening down the street?"

I added sugar to my coffee. "I may have heard something about that."

"Uh huh." She slid in next to Michael, forcing him to move towards the window. "I heard he's from New York and is spending a fortune on it."

I just gave her a bland smile. "I may have heard something about that, too."

She snorted and got up. "Christ, Brian. What, do you think the entire planet will stop having gravity if you admit you're worried about something?"

I was saved by the bell, but when Deb came back with our food, she sat down again. Fortunately, she had something else on her mind. "Have you heard from Sunshine?"

I took a bite of my sandwich and nodded. "I talked to him this morning. He's doing fine, aside from being in a constant state of longing for my dick."

Michael choked on his food, but Debbie just laughed. "Well, then you'll both have something to be thankful for next week, won't you?" I opened my mouth, but she held up her hand. "And I don't want to hear one single bad joke about stuffing Justin's turkey."

"Deb." I gave her my most reproachful look. "As if I would ever reduce the beauty and glory that will be Justin's and my tender reunion to a transient satisfaction of base carnal impulses."

She rolled her eyes. "Just promise me you'll leave the hotel room at least once."

"Do you want slides of us at the Eiffel Tower and strolling along the banks of the Seine?"

Michael glared at me. "Hey!"

"Sorry." I put down my coffee cup; it wasn't warm anymore. "Far be it from me to re-open old wounds."

Debbie stood up. "And tell Sunshine he'd better be eating right and getting some sleep. Jennifer said she got an email from him the other day that he'd sent at 3 in the morning."

I stared at her. "Yes, Deb, I'm going to nag Justin about getting enough sleep and eating his vegetables instead of fucking his brains out."

Michael laughed. "He'll be home at Christmas, Ma. You can nag him then yourself."

"Don't think I won't." She picked up the pot of now-cold coffee and marched off, muttering under her breath – if by muttering you mean "ranting loudly about assholes who think expressing simple human concern is nagging."

I had another late night at Babylon, still looking at the beams and rafters for some inspiration. I had a breakfast meeting the next day, to keep the clients happy and the money coming in, so I slept at the loft that night – or tried to. I was just drunk enough to feel like my skin was crawling with electricity, not drunk enough to pass out. I tried to jerk off, but my own touch felt wrong, first too dry, then slick with too much lube.

I lay on my back, arm folded across my eyes. I thought about Justin's mouth, soft lips, wet tongue, his throat swallowing around my dick. I felt the air in the loft move over my skin, my hairs stand up, my cock jerk and drip. The mattress moved when I rolled over; I pressed into it, grinding against the sheets and then my palm, slipped under me, not as wet now, better…

I reached behind me and opened my ass, touching my hole then rubbing behind my balls. I couldn't see anything except black; my face was pressed into the pillow, and my breath felt hot when I inhaled. I shoved and then did it again, over and over, feeling everything start to swell and get harder, move and freeze in absolute stillness, and the tension locked up at the base of my spine suddenly snapped, pouring out of me in pulsing blasts against the palm of my hand.

But I still couldn't fall asleep.

I was dazzling at breakfast anyway; some campaigns sell themselves, and this one had seemed so obvious to me I couldn't understand why no one had pitched it to them before.

It was after breakfast everything went to shit.

I had just snapped at Elaine to get Theodore into my office, but he was there almost before my finger left the button on the intercom, paper in hand. "Did you see this?"

"Yeah, I saw it." I went for the liquor cart; I didn't care what fucking time it was. I felt the burn of scotch in my throat, and shook my head. "You've got to admit, the guy's got balls." I frowned. "Unfortunately."

Ted and I looked at the ad. There wasn't anything to say other than that it was genius. Someone who I fully intended to either hire or kill had drawn something just enough not like Rage to avoid getting sued, but not enough to avoid the inevitable chain reaction of "did you see?" that was undoubtedly exploding all over gay Pittsburgh at that very moment.

I looked at Ted, and he was staring at me, his brow wrinkled in a way that I found particularly irritating. "What?"

He shook his head. "Michael and Justin are going to…" He stopped, undoubtedly because there were no words in the English language to accurately describe what they were likely to do.

I nodded. "Mayhem, blood, destruction, and revenge." I thought for a minute. "You know, Theodore, at the moment I can live with that."

My cell phone rang; I didn't have to look at the caller ID to know it was Michael. "Yes, I saw it."

I held the phone away from my ear for a minute, checked, and held it away again. I finally put it on speaker, and Ted and I sat there and listened for a while.

I switched off the speaker and talked into the phone. "Okay, Mikey, we know. You're angry." He started to talk, but I cut him off. "Very, very angry."

"Justin is going to…"

"I'm aware." I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. "I'll scan it and email it to him now. So he can get over it before I get there."

Ted snorted, and I glared at him. "Mikey?"

I heard him sigh. "Justin's not going to get over this by Thursday."

I looked at the calendar. "Sure he will. Justin's a big boy now."

I had to hold the phone away from my ear again, but this time it wasn't because Michael was yelling. It was because he was laughing at me. "Bye-bye, Mikey." I snapped my phone shut, and handed the paper to Ted. "Have someone scan this, and email me the file." I got up and walked back to the liquor cart.

Ted took the paper from me, and frowned as I poured more scotch into the glass. "Getting drunk won't make anything better, Bri. Believe me."

I knocked it back. "No, Theodore, it won't, but unfortunately hunting down Richard Bohling and killing him is illegal, so…"

"Good point." He left the room without saying anything else.

I sat down and tried to decide what, if anything, I should say in the email to Justin. I finally gave up and just sent the file.


	5. Directions, Chapter 5

  
  
**Directions, Chapter Five**  
By Xie

_"Never go on trips with anyone you do not love."_ \- Ernest Hemingway

**Justin's POV**

My closet was oddly large, given the general lack of space in the flat itself. It stretched back under the stairs near the front door, culminating in a tiny space where I'd shoved my suitcase. 

I held up my navy blue sweater. "Too 'Let's Go Europe'?"

Jense looked up from the copy of ArtForum she was flipping through. "It screams youth hostel."

I tossed it onto the top of my suitcase. "It also screams warm. I'm taking it."

I was deep inside the closet trying to find my striped scarf when I heard Jense say something. 

"What?"

"One of Mark's flatmates has a show opening in Stockholm in January. We should all go."

I nodded. "Sure. I've never been to Stockholm."

"I have. There is great art there." She frowned at the magazine page. "Although I do have to wonder why he couldn't have his opening in someplace more like Tahiti."

I glanced at the little electric fireplace, valiantly trying to warm my flat. "There's an art fair in Los Angeles in January."

"I was once in Los Angeles in the winter. It was cold and it never stopped raining." Her voice was dismissive. Jense wasn't much for second chances, apparently.

"Unlike Stockholm in January?"

She laughed and stood up. "I have an open studio at 2. You'll have to finish packing for Paris without me."

I grunted.

She stopped at the door. "Have you seen that new exhibit at the BM yet? The Masters?"

I shook my head. "'I'll go when I get back." 

"We're going this afternoon. You should come."

"I have too much to do before I leave. Did you ask Shen?"

"I told him about it, but you know how he is." She laughed. "You never know if he doesn't understand what you're saying, or is just pretending not to so he doesn't have to talk to you."

She waved as she went out the door. 

I finished packing, and went to get my laptop. Then I hesitated. I didn't really need it, as while I had a number of plans for my trip, none of them involved working, checking email, or updating my iPod.

I stuck it in a drawer.

I hadn't printed out the ad Brian had sent me. In fact, I'd almost deleted it from my computer. I'd woken him up at two in the morning his time when I got it, but despite his sleep-rough voice, I had the feeling he'd been waiting for me to call. I restrained myself until it was 6 AM in Pittsburgh before calling Michael. 

I said, "Did you fucking see…" on top of his, "Did you see what that fucker…"

Michael had had more time to process this than I had, but it didn't show. "They stole our work," he ranted. "Our idea, our creation. And they're using it against Brian."

His fury had the strange effect of calming me down. I walked over to the refrigerator, and pulled out some peanut butter. "How's Brian taking it?"

"It wouldn't be so bad if he…"

I smeared the peanut butter on some bread. "If he what?"

I heard Michael sigh. "Had an idea for an ad for Babylon."

I thought about that while I chewed. "This might actually help. Anger focuses him sometimes. We called him 'Rage' for a reason."

"Yeah." He sighed again. "When it doesn't make him completely go insane."

I sat down at the table. "Fuck."

But when I talked to Brian again, he seemed calm. "What would you have me do, Sunshine? Eviscerate the advertising agency with my powers of mind control?"

"It's a start."

He laughed. "I'll leave the revenge scenarios to JT and Zephyr; I have a business to run, an ad campaign to design, and a plane to catch." His voice changed a little. "After which I intend to spend four days fucking you until you can't walk, buying expensive things I don't need, and not eating at one single establishment that isn't Michelin rated."

I decided to put an extra bottle of lube in my suitcase. "I wonder what Michelin would give the diner?"

He laughed. "Four barf bags?"

"You eat half your meals there," I pointed out.

"It's not the food. It's the fond memories of a young bus boy who once worked there."

I laughed. "You really do need to get laid."

"No shit, Sunshine." He almost growled it.

He was at the office and I was in my studio, but I felt my cock get hard in my jeans, and my voice sounded a little breathless. "Me, too."

"Thursday."

I smiled. "In Paris."

"Later."

"Later."

Brian's flight arrived in Paris two hours before my train did. I took a taxi to the hotel. I'd been so pissed off about the ad I'd never gotten around to Googling the hotel address, and Brian had somehow managed not to mention the name when he emailed it to me. "Asshole," I muttered to myself when I saw it. 

The doorman opened the door and took my bag, another one opened the door to the hotel, and yet another ushered me over to the front desk. I'd barely said my name when the dark-haired young woman was gesturing to someone, and the next thing I knew, I was riding up to the eighth floor in an elevator lined with mirrors and paneled in gold-leaf.

My bag was being transported by staff in another elevator, sparing me the indignity of sharing my elevator with luggage or, one assumed, the staff.

I stuck my card in the door, but it opened even before the little light flashed. Brian yanked me into the room and was kissing me, one thigh pressed between my legs, his arms wrapped around my back.

I let him walk me down a short hallway, and then slid my feet back to the ground.

Then I hit him on the arm. "You asshole. The elevator had a crystal chandelier. Where the fuck did you find this place?"

He fell backwards onto the bed, which was piled with gold and white embroidered pillows. "You said painfully luxurious."

I laughed. "I didn't think you meant _literally_ painful." I threw myself on top of him. "That elevator hurt."

He spread his legs, and I kissed him again, feeling his tongue sliding into my mouth, his hands in my hair.

He pulled away. "You can just leave it." I looked over my shoulder and saw the guy standing there with my bag, pointedly not looking at the bed. I laughed, my face buried in Brian's shoulder.

His skin tasted warm and just a little salty. I nibbled at his throat, kissed his jaw, and crawled up him while he pulled my jacket off and threw it on the floor. He was already barefoot, and I toed off my shoes while he tugged my sweater over my head.

I straddled his thighs, then, looking at him while he opened my jeans. My cock was hard and leaking when he pulled it free, and I lifted my hips and let him yank my pants all the way off. I held his hands over his head with one of mine while the other slowly unbuttoned his jeans, then curled down and took the head of his cock in my mouth.

The smell of him hit me the moment I felt the smooth skin under my lips. I tasted his come leaking out the slit and rocked backwards, swallowing him down until my nose was pressed into his pubes.

He surged up under me and for a second I thought he was going to flip me over, but I held him still with my thighs. He helped me pull off his pants, and I grinned down at him. 

His smile was beautiful, and I leaned down and kissed it, holding both our cocks loosely in my hand. His fingers wrapped around mine, darker and longer, and for a second I thought I was going to come just like that. I moved up, and his hands dropped to my hips, pulling me forward while I put his cock right at my hole.

He'd been in the room for a while, it seemed; he'd put lube in the bedside drawer. I let him drizzle it onto my palm, then used it to lube his cock and my hole, riding my own fingers while his dug painfully into my hips. Then I shifted upwards again, pressing the head of his cock against my opening, moving just a little, rubbing it there, then moving down.

He gasped as the head slid inside, and so did I. I bent down and kissed him, then just let my forehead rest against his, letting more and more of my weight settle onto his dick, feeling it move deeper inside me.

I sat up when it grazed my prostate, my head thrown back. I started riding him then, my hands resting on his palms, until he was so deep inside me there wasn't anything more, not one inch of me that wasn't filled. Then I lifted almost all the way off and rammed myself down on him again, tightening against the thrust, shifting forward just a little at the end… and I almost shouted when his hand closed on my dick at the same moment I felt the head of his cock hit my prostate again.

"Fuck, fuck…." I didn't want it to be over but it was, him shooting into me while I felt my cock spurting come onto our joined fingers and his chest. "Fuck, Brian…"

He laughed, a little breathless. "Believe me, I will, but I was up all night; give me a minute before we go again."

I lifted myself off his cock, flinching a little. "Ow."

He snorted. "Don't blame me; you were driving."

"I'm out of practice." I grinned at him as I flopped onto the pile of pillows next to him. "Maybe I need a bigger dildo."

"Mmmmm." He worked his arm around my shoulders, and I felt his lips skim over my hair. "Welcome to Paris."

I kissed him, just brushing my lips across his twice. "Happy Thanksgiving."

He looked at me sideways. "Debbie warned me there would be dire retribution if I made any jokes about stuffing you."

I laughed. "I promise not to tell."

We lay there for a minute, and then I sighed. "Where's the bathroom?"

He waved his hand vaguely behind and to the right. I went through a paneled door, and burst out laughing.

"What?" he called from the bed.

"Have you been in here?" I walked across the marble floor, past the gigantic marble tub, and to the toilet where it stood next to the bidet on the gleaming marble wall.

"I have. Does it hurt more than the elevator?"

I glanced up at the ceiling. "There are _two_ chandeliers in the bathroom."

I finished pissing and turned around. He was leaning on the doorjamb, naked, shoving his hand through his hair. I decided to forgive him about the hotel. "Let's take a bath."

He grinned. "I knew you'd see it my way, eventually."

**Brian's POV**

I'd had to pay for the night before so we could have the hotel room first thing in the morning, but it was worth it. It was still light out even after we'd fucked, bathed, showered, fucked, slept, and fucked again.

Not much, but enough for Justin to stand out on the terrace gawking at the view of the Eiffel Tower. 

I came up behind him and nuzzled his neck. No matter how much soap and shampoo he used, he still smelled like Justin to me.

He put his hands on mine, and shook his head. "You're just too fucking much."

I nuzzled a little more deeply. "I know."

He sighed. "This is perfect."

"You can see Notre Dame from the other side."

He turned around inside my arms, and put both his hands on the sides of my face. "Brian… promise me something?"

"What?"

"Never, ever tell me how much this place cost."

I kissed him. "I promise."

He patted my face. "Good."

We'd made a deal that we weren't going to feel guilty for missing Paris if we spent the first 24 hours in our hotel room, and we didn't. We ordered room service for dinner and ate it on the terrace, although it was so cold we had dessert in the room. Justin was sprawled out on the floor in front of the sofa, licking chocolate sauce off his lips. I leaned down and kissed him, tasting pears, wine, and vanilla ice cream.

I slid off the sofa and sat next to him on the floor, bringing the bottle of wine with me from the side table. "So, what do you want to do first tomorrow? The Louvre?"

I tried to sound somewhat enthusiastic about that, but he shook his head vehemently. "Going to museums with you is torture. I'll go on Sunday, after you leave."

I felt my lips turn in. "Then what?"

He looked at me. "We should go shopping."

I laughed. "Going shopping with you is torture for me."

He shook his head. "Not this time. I have to buy Christmas presents."

I considered. "You'll have to pay duty to get them home when you come."

He sat up and poured wine into his glass. "It's that, or do all my shopping on Christmas Eve at home. I'd rather pay the duty." 

I held mine out, and he refilled it, too. "Okay, you've convinced me. Avenue Montaigne it is."

Justin grinned at me, and it occurred to me I might have been played. 

I had been. "Bring your platinum card," he said.

We didn't get out of bed until nearly noon the next day, other than to let the waiter in with coffee and breakfast. He ignored the satin duvet and embroidered sheet and most of the pillows, all of which were in piles on the floor, and asked where we wanted the tray.

He set it up in front of the sofa, but Justin carried it to the bed while I pulled the covers more or less together. And when we were done, and I still had the taste of coffee and croissants in my mouth, Justin pushed the duvet aside and sucked my cock, proving to me once and for all that not even my imagination could live up to this particular reality.

I came in his throat, and he lay there for a long time, his face on my thigh, my hand stroking his hair. 

Then he sighed. "I miss that."

"You miss it? How do you think I feel?"

He laughed and scooted up to lie next to me. "I don't know, Brian; how do you feel?"

I looked at him, and rolled my lips into my mouth. "I miss you." Then I cleared my throat. "Although I'm enjoying the reunion sex thing. So it's not all bad."

He smiled and stretched at the same time. "Should we go?"

I rolled over on top of him. "Sure. After the reunion sex."

I slid down his body, trailing my lips over his nipples and dipping my tongue into his naval. Then I felt his hands tug at my hair.

"Brian?"

"Mmmmm?" I started nipping at the insides of his thighs.

"Is it still reunion sex the sixth time?"

I lifted my head. "Seventh, and yes; everything in the first 24 hours is reunion sex."

Justin glanced at the clock, and smiled. "Okay… oh." Then he didn't say anything else for a while.

We fell asleep after, and when we woke up, it was nearly lunchtime. We made the firm resolution not to get room service again, and to let the housekeeping staff clean the suite. We rode down in the little gilt elevator, and I saw a hundred reflections of us in its mirrored walls.

It was even colder on the street than it had been on our terrace; the wind was bitter. But we ate at the first little café we passed, just grilled sandwiches and coffee. 

Justin, proving yet again that he was his mother's child, had a list, and we wandered among the famous stores, buying beautiful and expensive things for Daphne, Debbie, Jennifer, and everyone else on it. He actually refused to let me pay for any of it. "I'm living free at the university, and I still have the money from the last show. I can afford this."

I pointed out several things he might want to buy for me, but he just laughed and shook his head. "I already have yours."

I nodded sadly. "I was afraid of that."

We dropped everything off at the hotel, and went to dinner. We'd both had it with crystal and marble, and ate at a dark little bistro in the Marais, next to a club that didn't open until 10 – an hour we couldn't have failed to notice, as the music suddenly came on and made the walls vibrate.

I laughed and held up my wine glass in a salute. "To the thumpa thumpa, which apparently knows no boundaries or borders."

He was a little drunk, and his wine sloshed into mine when our glasses touched. "It's gauche to be there in the first hour. I think we should have some more wine."

"I think a walk, instead." I signaled the waiter for the bill, and after we paid, we walked around the neighborhood. I let Justin wander into a bookstore that doubled as an art gallery, but sat on a bench outside waiting for him.

It was cold – too cold for the coat I was wearing, but I didn't care. There were white lights everywhere, the Parisian concession to the season, but of course, done in the best of taste. Men walked down the street, most of them giving me a look I didn't need a French dictionary to understand.

Justin appeared and sat next to me. I put my arm around him, and we sat and watched the crowds and the lights for a while.

"Take me dancing." He had his hand on my thigh, and even through my coat it felt warm.

So I did. The club was exotic looking on the outside, and dark and loud on the inside. I didn't know anyone there, and didn't want to; we just joined the flow to the main dance floor, and drank the over-priced drinks at the bar.

We were dancing in a press of bodies, and even though my eyes were closed, I could still tell when the lights moved and changed. Justin's hair was soft under my lips, and I wrapped my fingers around the back of his neck. 

He looked at me. "I missed this, too." Then he smiled. "Not as much as fucking, but…"

I laughed. "Well, you can go out dancing in London if you want to, so there's no reason to miss it."

He nodded, his hands moving from my shoulders to my forearms. "I know. I have." We danced a little more, then he started talking again, his mouth close to my ear. "Have you ever noticed…"

"What?" I tightened my grip on his shoulders.

He shrugged. "I've been to clubs in London, New York, and Pittsburgh, and now Paris. And they're mostly all the same."

I looked around the dark, crowded space. It wasn't really that much like Babylon – it was more elegant, a little bigger, but without the second floor. There weren't any steel beams or catwalks, and it looked, if anything, more like a gutted old opera house or theater than a club.

But then I looked again, and thought, of course it's the same: men, dancing, music, darkness, drinks… "What else should they be like?"

He shook his head. "They should be like this. I love it." He kissed me once. "But I love Babylon more."

I frowned at him. "Why the fuck would you love Babylon more than the clubs in New York?" I waved at the distant stage. "Or this. Or London."

He smiled. "Because Babylon was the first club I went to. I met you there, I danced with you for the first time there, I kind of grew up there." He shrugged again. "It's a part of my life, I guess."

The music changed, a song I vaguely recognized from the week before at Babylon. I slid my hands under Justin's shirt, feeling his skin taut over his ribs, then moving them around and trailing my fingers down every bump in his spine.

I bent my knees a little, letting him grind into my thigh with his groin. His lips were open and hot when I kissed him, and his tongue slipped and slid over mine.

"We should go." I almost laughed; my voice was shaking a little.

"Uh huh." 

We got our coats and went out into the cold. There was a line of taxis outside, and when we got in, I told the driver, "La Tour Eiffel." 

Justin didn't react at first. I waited.

"Brian? Did you just tell him to take us to the Eiffel Tower?"

I nodded.

"That's incredibly cheesy."

I patted his leg, and looked out the window. "You love it."

He just laughed.

We got out and walked a little way through the park leading to the base of the tower. It was edged in white lights, and there were lights in the trees, too. 

"Still think it's cheesy?"

He tipped his head to the side. "You know, nothing in Paris is actually cheesy, is it?"

"Well," I said, "except for Euro Disney."

"Good point." 

We walked back to the hotel and rode up in the elevator. Justin eyed the chandelier. "You know, this might possibly be slightly cheesy."

I had to agree. "But the tub turned out to be not-cheesy."

"Anywhere you can have great sex is, by definition, not-cheesy."

I felt my lips turn in as the elevator stopped on the eighth floor. "Debbie's house."

Justin stopped in the hallway and looked at me. "Fuck. You're right." I opened the door, and he looked at me as we walked in. "I still like that tub, though."

I kissed him. "I'm not sure. I think we need to try it again."

**Justin's POV**

We'd made a number of solemn promises not to spend four entire days in bed. And we didn't. But although I still had a few places in Paris I wanted to see, none of them seemed particularly urgent when we woke up to a dark sky and pouring rain.

I stood at the window, barely able to see to the other end of the terrace, let alone the city lights beyond it. "Maybe we should go to a museum after all."

Brian was lying in bed, a cup of coffee on his bare chest. "We could, however little we might like it, spend the day in bed."

I walked over and climbed in next to him, and put his cup on the bedside table. He surprised me by pulling me down against him. "What would you do," he said, "if you could do anything?"

I kissed him. "Today?"

He nodded. "Today."

I let him roll me onto my back. "First, I'd let you rim me for at least an hour."

"Then what?" He started kissing his way down my body.

"Then fuck me…"

"Mmmmm."

"Then…" I stopped.

He looked up at me. "What's wrong?"

I shook my head. "Nothing. I just realized you're going back tomorrow, that's all."

"Don't think about it." 

I smiled down at him. "Maybe if you were licking my ass that would be easier to do."

I laughed as he flipped me over. His tongue flickered over my hole, then probed at it, first tracing each little wrinkle, then wriggling at the opening. I moved, trying to spread my legs, but he didn't let me. He just pulled me open with his hands and lapped at me.

I let myself float on it for a long time, his fingers sliding in and out with his tongue, his mouth on my balls, biting at my thighs. I even felt his teeth nibbling at my hole, then his fingers pressing inside me while his thumb moved in circles on my perineum. 

I didn't mean to get up on my knees, didn't mean to start begging him to fuck me, but when I felt the cold lube where his hot tongue had been, I almost came, just thinking about it.

He teased me for a while with the head of his cock, rubbing it up and down my crack and over my opening, but I pulled at the back of his thigh until he plunged into me. His hand was suddenly on my shoulder, using it to leverage his next thrust, and this time I couldn't help it, I shouted something and drove myself back against him.

He slammed into me, relentless, with a perfect rhythm, every time right over my prostate, until I panted and begged and slapped his leg behind me. Then he curled over my body and grabbled my cock, swiping his thumb roughly over the head and moving my leaking come down over the shaft.

I shouted again and started to come, alternating waves of heat and cold flooding over and through me, electricity shooting down my legs and up my spine, until I felt him freeze and then shoot deep inside my ass.

I made him stay inside me, and we were both mostly asleep when he finally slipped out. I laughed and complained at the same time, and he took a feeble swat at my arm. "What, I'm supposed to stay hard for 24 hours just so that doesn't happen?"

"No, but ten minutes would be nice."

"God, you're spoiled."

I lifted my head. "And whose fault is that?"

Brian rolled over onto his back, and draped his arm over his brow. "Few people really understand the burden of being me."

I patted his shoulder. "I know. You're very noble." I got out of bed. "I'm going to shower. Don't even think of falling back to sleep. It stopped raining, and we're going out."

We went to Montmartre, and then we went to the hotel Brian had stayed at when he'd been in Paris before, down by the Musée de Cluny. "We can stay here next time," I told him.

He nodded. "Or in the Marais. I think I've had all I can take of chandeliers."

"The view is nice, though."

"And the bed." He was grinning.

We looked at the ruins of the old Roman baths next to the museum. "If only the Liberty Baths were like this," I said.

"I'm sure the crusted come is about this old."

"Eeeuuww. I've been naked in that place."

He looked at me like I was nuts. "Yeah, I somehow knew that. Maybe because I was there. In fact, I seem to recall a time I was the one who undressed you…"

"I was young. I had no idea how unhygienic that place really was."

He patted my head. "It's better that way; how else can we lure the young to a life of debauchery and sin?"

I stopped and put my arms around his neck. "Did you lure me? I seem to recall demanding you take me home."

He touched his nose to mine. "You were easier than most."

It started raining again, so we went into the museum. It wasn't the kind of museum I liked, full of tapestries and medieval paintings and statues. "I don't really think this is art," I told Brian.

He shrugged. "I offered to go to the Louvre with you."

"Reluctantly…"

"I was ready to make the sacrifice…"

I hit his arm. "Blah blah blah. I'll go tomorrow. I wouldn't subject you to it. Now, let's stop subjecting me to this."

It was still raining, but we found a taxi and he had him drive us by the Seine and to the Île de la Cité. We walked to Notre Dame, and I looked up at its arches and stained glass window. "This is amazing." I frowned. "Maybe I like the middle ages after all."

"Maybe you just like cathedrals."

I thought about it. "I like bridges, too."

Brian waved his hand towards the water. "Well, there you are." He looked at me. "Do you know what I like?"

"Sex, drugs, booze, shopping, pretending you don't care about anyone but surrounding yourself with everyone you love, and beating the crap out of anyone who tries to compete with you professionally."

He stopped and looked at me. "Huh. When did you get so smart?"

I pulled his hand and kept walking back towards the river. "You're not really as hard to figure out as you think you are."

We got a cab on the other side of the Seine, and went back to the hotel. We'd planned on going out, but at the last minute I convinced him to get room service again. It was too cold to eat on the terrace, even though it had stopped raining, but I put on my coat and took my coffee out there after we ate.

"We'll come back." He was leaning on the railing, his back to the view, looking at me.

"I loved it." I put down my cup and kissed him. "And I hope you notice how I didn't once mention that ad…"

He sighed and pulled away. "Until now."

"Until now." He went inside, and I picked up my cup and followed him. "Are you going to do anything about it?"

He sat on the sofa and looked at me, then leaned forward, took the bottle of wine, and filled his glass. "About the ad? No."

I sat next to him. "About the ad campaign. For Babylon."

He looked at me, and a little smile quirked over his lips, just for a second. "Oh, I have that all figured out. Didn't I mention that?"

"Asshole. No. When did you figure it out?"

He shrugged, and kissed me, tasting like wine. "It was something you said."

I stared at him, then laughed. "What did I say?"

"Why you liked Babylon best."

"Because I met you in front of it? You think you can market a club because it's the first place we ever danced?"

He smiled. "Something like that." I must have still looked skeptical, because he rolled his lips inward. "Justin, Justin. Haven't you learned to trust me on things like this?"

I put down my wine glass. "What, on knowing when something I said or did saved your ass? You'd think after all these years, I would."

I called down to have the dinner service removed while Brian packed. The car was picking him up at 8 in the morning. After we went to bed, I sucked his cock slowly and for a long time, bringing him to the edge of coming then backing him away, over and over. He finally pulled my face closer when I started pulling away the last time, his hands desperate in my hair, saying my name in a harsh voice. 

So I let his dick hit the back of my throat while I slipped my finger inside his ass, and swallowed his come as it poured into my mouth. Then I knelt over him and jerked off on his chest and stomach, my come glistening on the ridges of his muscles.

We didn't really sleep, but it was still dark when he rolled tight against me, sighing. "Four days really wasn't long enough, was it?"

"It's weird. I feel like we've been here a long time… and like we just got here. At the same time." Then I kissed him, hard.

When I broke the kiss, he was looking at me. "I'm not going anywhere, Justin." He touched my hair. "Well, other than back to Pittsburgh in the morning."

I laughed. "I'm not going anywhere, either. Other than London tomorrow night."

He pulled the duvet over us both. "Well, there you are. Neither of us is going anywhere, and you'll be home in…" he calculated in his head… "Twenty-seven days."

I frowned. "That sounds like a long time right now."

He rolled onto his side and rested his head on his elbow. "I'll be so busy saving Babylon and selling my soul to pay for this trip…" I smacked him, but he ignored me… "that I won't even notice."

"Please. You'll be calling me for phone sex before you've gotten over your jet lag." I hooked my leg over his.

He sighed. "Justin?"

"Hmmm mmm?"

"I hate phone sex."

I patted him. "Me, too."


	6. Directions, Chapter 6

**Directions, Chapter 6**  
By Xie

_"There's no point in direction;  
We cannot even choose a side."_ \- Peter Gabriel

**Brian's POV**

I was standing on the roof of Babylon, looking at the river in the distance. I could hear Ted talking to the contractor, and feel the pinpoint burn of the snow blowing into my eyes. But I kept staring.

It was nothing like the views from the terrace of the hotel in Paris. It certainly wasn't the kind of shot you'd put on a postcard. The river was too far away, the bridges off-center, the nearby rooftops a mess of gravel, snow, and ventilation equipment. But I liked it. 

"Bri?"

I turned around and faced Ted. "Did you beat him into submission?" I could see the contractor writing something on a pad held against the door that led back into the building. 

He pulled his collar tighter around his neck with a gloved hand. "I think so. He said we should be able to start construction on Wednesday." He frowned. "Now can we go inside? We don't all have anti-freeze in our veins. Some of us still have good old-fashioned blood."

I clapped his shoulder as we headed for the door. "It's not anti-freeze, Theodore; it's alcohol. Another tragic consequence of your unfortunate condition. You'll be found frozen in an alley one day, all because of AA. I can see the lawsuit now."

He mumbled something about "worse ways to die" as we walked down the stairs. I pretended not to hear him.

When we got back to the office, Cynthia was waiting in the reception area. Always a bad sign. 

"The proofs of the ads just came in."

I closed my eyes for just one second and pretended that was good news. "And…"

"The newsprint runs are a mess."

I sighed. "When will the newspaper industry finish dying so we can stop buying their fucking low quality, crap production value, full-page ads and focus on the Internet, where everything is beautiful all the time?" 

"At some point after we've either saved or lost Babylon," she answered. 

Ted and I followed her into my office. 

"Fuck." I stopped so abruptly that Ted crashed into me. I didn't pay any attention to his sputtered apologies, just shrugged off my overcoat and let it drop on the coffee table as I passed it on my way to the boards leaning against the far wall. 

Cynthia had a huge, evil smile on her sadistic face. "Did I forget to mention that the glossy, web, and billboard proofs were the best work this office has ever done?"

It was better than I'd thought or hoped or even imagined, which considering I'd imagined the whole thing in the first place, was impressive. "They're not bad."

She rolled her eyes, but didn't argue with me. "Unfortunately, the newsprint ones are as bad as I said they were."

She held a small stack of boards out to me, and I glanced through them. "I had a feeling the black backgrounds wouldn't work in newsprint. What about a tighter close-up on the image for those?"

I spread them out on the table in front of us, and we all looked at them. Cynthia finally nodded. "I'm not sure, but let me talk to Amanda. She's the project director on these, and she's the one who flagged the newsprint version as a potential problem before we even sent them out. She probably has some ideas."

I had walked over to look at the billboard version while she was talking. I'd been insistent that this biggest ad should have the least amount of text, and I'd been, of course, right. "Amanda?"

"Amanda Pacheco, a new hire in the art department."

I raised an eyebrow and looked at her, then at Theodore. "I don't remember hiring any new staff in the art department."

Ted shrugged. "We tell you things on a need to know basis, Bri. Trust us, it's better that way."

I grunted and went back to staring at the wall and table full of black and white images, touched here and there with just a ghost of hand-coloring. Then I made the mistake of glancing at Theodore, who had an expression on his face more appropriate for watching his dearest friend being buried after a tragic car crash than looking at a hot, sweaty guy with perfect abs pulling his shirt off over his head.

I raised an eyebrow.

Ted shook his head. "His place is going to be jammed to the rafters New Year's Eve."

I nodded. "It is."

"And this ad campaign, however brilliant the concept or hot the shirtless guys, can't change that."

I nodded again. "Very true."

"So, what's the secret plan, boss?"

I shrugged. "There isn't any. I agree. He'll open on New Year's Eve, it'll be packed, and it will get great reviews and word of mouth."

"And Babylon takes the hit." 

"Exactly, Theodore."

"So why are you smiling?"

I wasn't smiling at the moment, but I let it pass. "Because after the first few weeks, he won't be the new game in town anymore. Then all he'll have is…" I paused.

Ted looked at me. "Money, experience, and a great head for business?"

I shook my head. "New York."

Ted looked morose. "And we'll have…"

I cut him off. "We'll have Pittsburgh, Theodore."

"You hate Pittsburgh," he pointed out.

I smiled at him. "And yet, here I am. Here Richard Bohling is. Here, I might add, are you." 

Cynthia was smiling. This was the part she'd already figured out. "Exactly. Because if Pittsburgh were New York…"

Ted was staring at both of us, and then he turned slowly and looked at the ads again. I could see the thousands of hamster accountants turning their wheels inside his brain as he finally figured it out. 

"If Pittsburgh were New York, it would have great shops, a world class opera, and my condo would be worth $1.7 million." He paused. "You think he's going to overshoot the target."

I nodded. "Because if there's one thing I know, Theodore – although if you tell a single soul I said this, I'll have you and all your loved ones killed in a bizarre and untraceable series of accidents – it's the Pitts."

**Justin's POV**

It was almost a relief, after the gilt and chandeliers and marble bathrooms in Paris, to get back to my dim little flat at the university. I had started a series of paintings before I left, and when I came back, I couldn’t remember what I wanted to do with them. The light had changed, or my mood – I didn't know.

And I was horny. I woke up that way and fell asleep that way, and no amount of jerking off made any difference. Brian and I talked every day, but the time difference still fucked us up. I'd call him at night, from bed or my studio, everything dark and quiet around me, and he'd be at the office, getting interrupted by Ted or Cynthia or some intern bearing storyboards. Or he was at Babylon, and the beat of the music coming through the phone made me crazy to touch him, lick the sweat off his throat, dance with him in a dark place.

So I painted that. I painted the dark corners of Babylon, not the backroom but the places where guys danced and kissed and ground against each other. I tried a dozen ways to make the light break around falling glitter without using metallics; they felt cheap and wrong. I did it with white paint, hard beads of it as tiny as seeds, trailing down laser-sharp edges and exploding across the bottom of the canvas like water splashing on the ground.

And I still went to bed aching with loneliness and horniness every night. 

"This is completely fucked," I said to Brian one night. I was in my studio washing brushes, and he was driving from Kinnetik to the diner.

He sounded a little distracted. "This being…"

"Your dick being several thousand miles away from my ass." I looked at the bristles on the brush I'd been using that night; I was going to need to replace it soon. "Or vice versa."

He sighed. "You'll be here in less than two weeks."

"That doesn't sound soon."

He didn't answer right away. "No, it doesn't, does it?"

"It's just hard." He started to say something, but I cut him off. "Shut up. I mean it's _difficult_."

I heard the engine cut off. "Thirteen days."

I decided it was time to change the subject. I wasn't sure, but I thought I might have actually been whining. "Have you ground Richard Bohling into the dirt yet?"

Brian laughed. "Have you talked to Michael today?"

I had put the phone on speaker while I got into my jacket. "No, why?"

Brian's car door slammed. "He has some idea for a new Rage villain. An evil club owner." 

I laughed. "Good. It's about time Rage got on the case." I'd walked out into the quiet lobby of the studio building, and hesitated before going outside. It looked like it was snowing. I watched the vertical lines driving down through the light from the fixture over the front door, and decided it was just rain.

"I saw the proofs on the ads today."

"And?" I pushed out the door and heard the lock click when it swung shut behind me. The rain sliced across my face and I put my head down and ran towards my door, holding the phone tight against my ear.

"The newsprint ones need help. The rest were all right."

"Email me a link."

"I did."

I opened the door to my flat, and switched on a light. I could hear Brian talking to someone, but after a minute he was back. "Are you in the diner?"

"Another gourmet meal eaten while en route from Kinnetik to Babylon. I tell you, Justin, if only the little people could live the glamorous life of we powerful corporate executives…"

I flopped down on the bed, my feet still on the floor. "I miss you."

"Thirteen days."

I looked at the clock; it was almost 2 AM. "Twelve for me."

Brian laughed. "Twelve, then. Later."

It was still raining the next morning when I went to a news agent near the campus that sold the Sunday New York Times. I bought it almost every week, and read it drinking coffee at a café next door. It wasn’t anything like being home, or even like being in New York. But I would read about movies and art exhibits, and ads for obscenely expensive condos in marginal neighborhoods. It was kind of like a cheap vacation. 

That morning, I was reading a review of a film I’d never see when Jense dropped into the chair across from me. “Is this where you hide?” Her boyfriend Mark pulled over a chair from another table and sat down with us. 

“I’m not hiding,” I said, turning the page. “I’m reading the paper.” 

Mark had started looking at the discarded front section. “War. Corruption. Greed. It never changes, but they still call it news.” 

“I’m reading the arts and style section,” I told him. "Only tangentially about war and corruption." I considered the review I was reading. "Greed, I'll grant you."

We all sat there drinking coffee and reading the paper, until a gust of wind blew the gray London rain against the windows. I put my cup down. "Fuck."

Jense glanced up. "It's just rain."

I laughed. "For which meteorological condition you condemned Los Angeles for all time."

She shook her head. "Los Angeles should always be warm and sunny, with palm trees. London should always be cold, wet, and enshrouded in fog." 

"Except when my friend Kalli's plane is landing in two hours."

She brightened. "That's right. She's coming today." Another gust of wind and rain made the window shake. "Hopefully."

I was in my studio a few hours later, carefully applying a line of white to the thick edge of a dark smear of paint, when my phone rang. "Are you here?"

"I'm here, I'm tired, the flight was oversold and late, and I'm starving." She sounded extremely annoyed.

I smiled happily. "Fuck, I've missed you."

She laughed. "Just meet me wherever the cab lets me off with hot food and something alcoholic, and I'll be a happy girl." 

When she got to my flat, she sighed, kicked off her shoes, and threw herself down on the little sofa in front of the fireplace. "I'm pretending this is real."

I handed her a glass of wine. "It's better that way."

She glanced dubiously at the glass. "Much as I'd love to, I think I'd better have some food first."

I made her a sandwich, and after she'd eaten, she shoved her feet back into her painfully high-heeled short boots and demanded I take her out to my studio.

She stood in the middle of the room, turning around slowly. It was the best time of day, the light flooding in from the ravine, a little bit of sunshine filtering feebly through the trees and clouds, and making the raindrops on the glass sparkle and shimmer. "Christ. When I think about that fucking hellhole studio co-op we used to be in…"

I snorted. "I know. It's the best thing about this place. I fucking love it."

She shook her head, and started walking around the perimeter. I sat down at my computer; Kalli liked to look at paintings alone. But eventually I had to get up. She'd been standing in front of the same one for so long I couldn’t stand it anymore.

I couldn't read the look on her face at all. "What do you think?"

It was one of the strange scattered-light pieces I'd done, thinking about Babylon and Brian and glitter and sex. It was the best of them, except for the one still on my easel. 

Kalli didn't answer right away, just chewed at her lip.

"Kalli?"

"I'm just trying to understand how you could have painted this. How you got from where you were two years ago, to this." She sounded almost pissed off, and I didn't know why.

She must have seen something in my face, because hers softened. "Justin, I love it. It's your best work, and honestly, when I look at it, I think: Of course. This is where he's been going. But it's almost the last thing I'd have predicted you'd do. You normally have so much tension between the graphic and the organic, and this is just entirely about the light." 

I realized I'd been holding my breath, and let it out. And then I felt a smile start, and realized how much I'd wanted her to see what I was doing here. Not just look at it; see it. "Thanks." I wanted to say more, but my mind was a blank.

She laughed. "You're blushing. That's really so adorable."

"Fuck you. And what about the rest of the paintings?"

We talked about some of the others, and I remembered when I'd first met her in New York, how it was always me and her arguing with everyone else about, well… everything. When she talked about art – mine, hers, someone else's –her words always seemed to express what I'd been feeling, but hadn't had a chance to process or articulate. She'd just say it, and everyone else would start arguing, but I'd think, "Exactly." 

I wanted to show her Shen's work, but his studio was locked, so we went down to the end of the building where Farid Tallal had his space. He was a painter from Morocco. I wasn't wild about his work; it felt like he was trying too hard. 

He was there, and he let us in, a little reluctantly. But he very politely showed us around, and when Kalli started asking him a question about some angular yellow canvases he had in various stages of completion, he looked surprised and then gratified. I left the two of them talking at the far end of the room, and pretended to be looking at the paintings near the door.

I still didn't like them.

We finally started back, and I said, "Okay, did you like his stuff?"

She nodded, and laughed. "I know exactly why you don't, though. You think it's derivative. That's your worst insult."

I considered it. "It _is_ derivative."

"What isn't?"

I shook my head. "I don't mean it builds on a tradition, or reflects on it. I mean it's not genuine."

She laughed. "Yes, I know what you mean, Justin. Does this conversation sound familiar?"

I had to laugh, too. "I guess it does." I paused for a second. "Huh. You'd think I'd do nothing but talk about art with people here. But…"

She smiled and flicked the end of my nose with her fingernail as we walked up the stairs to my flat. "There's no one like me. Admit it."

We showered and changed and went out to a restaurant Carolyn swore we'd love. It was on a dark, mostly residential street about five blocks from the campus, and its walls were raw cement – something you almost never saw in London. The food was pretty but insubstantial, and the whole place, menu and all, reminded me of Los Angeles, in a strange, British-accented kind of way.

The waiter had finished clearing our plates away after we ate, and glanced at the half-full wine bottle. I nodded and he poured wine into my glass, then Kalli's. I glanced at her face and took a sip. "What's wrong? You seem kind of…"

"Melancholy? Despondent?"

I made a small gesture with my hand. "Okay."

She drank some wine and shrugged. "Did you want to know what I thought about your paintings?"

I stared at her in confusion. We'd always talked to each other about our work, from the first day we met. "Of course I did. You're the person whose opinion I value the most."

She smiled and moved her fork around a little, then looked right at me. "Then tell me: You were at my show. What did you think about mine?"

I sat back. Brian and I had gone to her opening at a Brooklyn gallery on my way to London, but she'd been so busy I hadn't had a chance for anything more than a hug and congratulations. Which I'd actually been grateful for at the time. "It wasn't your best work," I said cautiously.

She shook her head. "Yes, it was, Justin. That's the problem. It _was_ my best work." She swallowed the entire glass of wine, and the waiter materialized and refilled it for her. When he was gone, she gave me a tight smile across the table. "Good thing I make my living telling Armand what I think about artists like you, instead of trying to do something with my own paintings."

I had no fucking idea what to say. "Kalli…"

She laughed. "Don't. Just don't. Let's just finish dinner and go out and get incredibly drunk. Take me somewhere with lots of guys dancing without their shirts." 

I bit my lip, and then nodded. "Okay."

Even after she got drunk – and she got as drunk as I'd ever seen her – she didn't break down and cry or talk about her painting any more, even when I tried to bring it up. I danced with her for a while, and then with some guys who were visiting from Spain – who leaves Spain in December to come to London? – and then I pulled her away from a drag queen with whom she was in a deep, inebriated conversation about, as far as I could tell, the merits of liquid eyeliner.

She threw up a couple of times when we got back to the flat, and then passed out on the too-short sofa. I sighed and put some blankets over her, and then I guess I passed out, too.

I woke up in the morning with a headache. Kalli was still asleep – it was hours earlier in New York, and she'd been drunker than me. But she woke up when I was making coffee, and staggered towards the bathroom after digging a few things out of her suitcase. She came out wearing a purple robe and a pair of thick socks, and I shoved a mug of coffee into her hand. 

She was sitting in front of the electric fireplace, sipping coffee and staring at the flickering lights, her feet tucked underneath her. 

I sat down next to her. "Breakfast, or do you need to puke again?"

She looked at me. "I puked?"

"Twice. Explosively."

"Tell me I did it in the toilet."

I nodded. 

She sighed gratefully. "Oh, good." She gave me a smile, and it actually looked like a real Kalli smile. "So, what are we doing today?"

I frowned. "Well, some of my friends wanted us to come with them to an exhibit at the British Museum…but…"

She laughed. "It sounds perfect. Very London. Is it the Master's exhibit? They wrote about it in the New York Times when it opened, and I wondered if you'd seen it."

"Not yet. But Jense and Mark – those are the friends we're going with – saw it last month. They said it was amazing."

"It does seem odd," she said, setting her coffee cup on the table. 

"What does?"

"To stop in London on my way to Italy, and spend the day looking at sketches and paintings by Italian artists."

I stood up, and carried both our cups to the kitchen and filled them again. "It's very European of us."

She took her cup out of my hand, and grinned at me over the rim. 

**Brian's POV**

I'd spent the morning at a meeting with the Pittsburgh Convention and Visitors' Bureau, metaphorically holding their little hands over an aggressive new television campaign they'd committed to and about which they were predictably having second thoughts. I'd smiled and let Cynthia show them a dazzling animated PowerPoint presentation that refuted every one of their concerns effortlessly, and then re-stated everything she'd already covered in slightly shorter words.

It all took just under two hours and gave me a massive headache. "Christ, it's fucking unbelievable they've gotten as much done on this project as they have. I don't think some of those people have ever even _used_ the internet."

Cynthia paused on the bottom step, presumably trying to gauge the impact of the muddy slush at the base of the stairs on her charcoal gray suede Manolos. I saw a cab and gestured at the driver, pretending not to see her awkwardly hop to a patch of clear sidewalk but still being right there to grip her arm when she slid on the ice.

My headache hadn't gotten any better by the time we got back to the office, and I still had it when I left to meet Michael for dinner. He'd half-heartedly asked if I wanted to go somewhere other than the diner, but I had enough of what passed for fine dining in Pittsburgh with my clients. It was better to eat somewhere that didn't pretend.

"You know," Michael said around a mouthful of club sandwich, "I still think we should have sued Richard Bohling for stealing Rage."

I put a French fry in my mouth and frowned at him while I chewed. "Yeah. So you've said. Eighty times now. Even if the lawyers didn't tell you there's no case, it would have just given him a shit load of free publicity and made us look like pussies."

Michael shook his head. "Doesn't it bother you?" 

I shrugged. "Not really."

"He stole Justin's and my work, our ideas, our characters, and used them to…" He sputtered out of words.

"Those are reasons why it bothers you and Justin. You asked about me." I threw two twenties on the table and stood up, pulling on my coat. "JT and Zephyr will have to fight this fight on their own. Rage is too busy saving Gayopolis once again."

Michael followed me outside. "I still don't…"

I stopped and put my hands on his shoulders. "Mikey. Forget about it. There's nothing you can do." 

"I can have him driven insane with the sensation of thousands of ants biting at his flesh even while no doctors can detect the slightest problem and nothing they do makes it stop."

I shuddered. "Wow. Hell hath no fury like a comic book geek scorned."

"You'd better believe it."

I had to laugh. "I have to go to Babylon."

He started walking in that direction. "I'll go with you."

Emmett was there, so I left him and Michael downstairs while I went to the office. But halfway there I stopped. I looked down at the two of them, talking and dancing, Emmett leaning down to hear what Michael was saying, then shaking his head and laughing.

I watched them for a long time, leaning on the catwalk railing, wondering what the fuck I was doing this for. It wasn't impossible that if Richard had come to me at the beginning, I might have sold the club to him. Travel was starting to sound appealing – travel that didn't involve business meetings and packing suits – and running two businesses didn't leave a lot of room for sunning myself on a Tahitian beach. Or transporting my dick to whatever continent contained Justin's ass at the moment.

It was a thought I'd avoided having for a long time, and I didn't dwell on it then, either. There was no fucking way Richard Bohling was going to win this game now, even if I died from lack of getting laid in the process.

I shook my head, got a bottle of scotch from the upstairs bar, and headed for the club office. Fifteen minutes later, I'd signed off on a new security protocol for the private parties being held at the club during the holiday season, and listened to a boring, pointless explanation of something to do with the plumbing for the rooftop construction that was having some kind of negative impact on the flushing of the downstairs toilets. After all, dealing with toilets was why I paid Theodore. I was sure it was in his job description.

I found Michael and Emmett knocking back shots by the backroom door. "It's good to see you ladies are having a nice time."

Michael giggled, but Emmett gave me a look that seemed to convey he saw through me. "What about you, Brian? When do _you_ have a nice time these days?"

I leaned in a little closer to his ear. "You know what they say, boys." I took a swallow from my bottle. "No rest for the wicked."

"No rest for the wicked workaholic, you mean," Michael said.

I rolled my eyes.

"No rest for the _married_ wicked workaholic," Emmett corrected him. "I've gotta hand it to you, Brian. I never thought you could do it." He gestured at the bartender for another set of shots. "In fact, I'm surprised your balls haven't turned bright blue and fallen onto the floor and shattered into a million pieces." He frowned. "I mean, ball."

I waved the bartender away. "That's it, you're both cut off." I grabbed their shoulders and steered them towards the coat check. "Time for Mikey to go home to the wife and kiddies, and you to go… wherever it is you go when you're not here." I considered that for a second. "If you're ever not here."

Emmett stopped and grabbed my arm. "That reminds me! When the new club opens, Brian, I could go there that night and give you the inside story. Be a sort of spy, what do they call it…"

"Industrial espionage?" I laughed. "Yes, Emmett, you're _exactly_ who I'd get to do that."

"Well, someone has to," he pointed out, in a voice both reasonable and drunk.

"And someone will. I put Theodore in charge of that job." When he was through with the toilets, of course. "But feel free to go to the opening. I'm sure you won't be the only one who deserts their Pittsburgh homo home base for fresh hunting grounds."

"Aren't you going to do something?" he asked. "You're just going to go down without a fight?"

I nodded at the coat check boy or girl or whatever he or she was, and pushed them towards the door. "Yes, Emmett," I said, sarcasm dripping. "That's exactly what I'm going to do."

Michael gave a drunken shout. "Hah! You have a plan. I knew it."

"Tell us, tell us, tell us." Emmett was practically clapping his hands. I was starting to wonder if Ted wasn't right with the whole AA thing.

I put them both in a cab and waved bye-bye as they drove off, then drove myself to the loft. I glanced at the phone; it was 3 AM in London. I knew Kalli was there. They were either asleep or talking about the incredible deep meaning of some obscure movement in modern art while drinking cheap Italian wine. I got out my laptop, and opened the file of the FDA's comments on the new Remson migraine drug. 

It was going to be the worst kind of long night.

I woke up early, and my headache was back. Since I couldn't get a sample of Remson's new wonder drug, I decided I'd try the gym instead.

I warmed up and then sat down on the bench and started doing alternating bicep curls. At some point I stopped counting and started reconsidering some of the ad placement decisions I'd made the day before. Maybe it wasn't too late to…

"You know, if you can do that many reps, you probably should increase your weight instead."

I looked up. It was Ben, a towel around his neck. I let the weights fall with a thud to the floor next to my feet. "Thanks."

I stood up and grabbed my own towel, wiped my face, and raised an eyebrow at Ben, who was still looking at me.

"Do you have a new trainer? You're looking pretty strong, there."

I snorted and lay down on the weight bench, closing my hands around the metal bar above my head. "It's called…" I hoisted the weight off its rest and grunted a little… "sublimation, Professor. You might have heard of it."

Ben stood behind me, spotting me. "I'm familiar with the term, and the phenomenon," he said. "You need to lower that as slowly as you raised it."

I nodded once and slowed down. Say what you like about his personality, and really, there's not much to say, but if Ben wanted to give me free advice on developing upper body strength, I was happy to take it.

Unfortunately, it seemed that couples counseling was going to come with the weight training tips. "Michael talked to Justin last night."

I ignored him, and felt my wrists trembling as I raised the bar. It suddenly felt lighter; Ben was taking some of the weight. "Change your grip."

I shifted my hands on the bar, and he let me have the weight back. 

"That's better." He didn't say anything while I did one more rep, then he helped me drop the weight into its rests. 

After I was done with my workout, I took a shower and headed for the diner to replace every gram of fat I'd just burned off. 

**Justin's POV**

"Oh, God, he has that 'I have to go draw something right now' look on his face." Kalli pushed gently on my shoulder, laughing.

Jense and Mark were laughing, too. "Yes," Mark said, "Jense's like that as well. One moment they're there, talking, and the next they're digging frantically for a sketchbook."

It was, of course, the worst kind of artistic cliché to be inspired by Michelangelo and da Vinci. But I was. Not to do that kind of sketching, or throw it all away and go paint cherubs and angels and divine beings, or whatever. There was just something… I wasn't sure. I could see it in their sketches, the paintings, the sculpture. Something more than structure. I didn't…

I felt Kalli's hand on my back, gently pushing. "I'm sure you weren't listening, but apparently we're going for tea. I have a sketchbook in my purse if you need one."

I shook my head and laughed.

We went to the pub near campus that night, and Kalli made fun of us for drinking warm beer and used that as an excuse not to have anything alcoholic. I suspected it was more that she was still somewhat hungover from the night before.

We sat up late in front of the little fireplace. Her flight was the next morning, and somewhere around 2 AM we realized we weren't going to go to bed.

"What are you going to do?" I finally asked her.

She was staring at her toes in the fake flickering firelight. "What I'm doing. Run Armand's gallery, and eventually my own. Look at other people's artwork and accept reality. What else can I do?"

I tried to imagine what that would feel like. I remembered when I couldn't draw after I got bashed, and how many times I wished I'd died instead of that. I thought about paintings that took me five times as long to finish, because I had to baby my fucking hand. I even thought about Rage, and drawing it while I cradled my wrist.

I felt her poke me with her toe. "Justin. I'm okay."

I looked at her. She'd washed off her makeup and tied her hair at the back of her head. It was the youngest I'd ever seen her look. Or not the youngest; the least sophisticated.

"I know you will. I was just thinking…"

She laughed a little bitterly. "What it would be like if it was you?"

"After I got bashed, I couldn't draw. At all. I couldn't hold a pencil."

She was staring at me, but she didn't say anything.

"The doctors said I'd probably never draw again." I took a sip of coffee, but it was cold, so I put the cup on the hearth. "I wished he'd killed me."

"How long did that last?" 

I shrugged. "It gradually got better. I started using the computer – Brian got me some software that helped. And I began to do pieces with manipulated imagery, and eventually I did get more control. But I still have a lot of trouble with my hand when I work for more than a couple of hours, or do anything that requires fine motor control."

I picked up our cups, and stood up. "I'm going to make some more coffee. Did you want to try to get some sleep, or…?"

She got up with me. "Just coffee. If I go to sleep now, I'll miss my flight."

We were watching the coffee drip into the pot. It was dark outside, and absolutely quiet. The clock said 4:15.

"I don't think lack of talent constitutes a disability," she said after a few minutes. "And I'm not the survivor of a hate crime. I'm just… not good enough."

I shoved my hand through my hair. "Does that change how it feels?"

"I don't know. Does it?"

The coffee pot made its little ping. I didn't answer her while I filled our cups, because the truth was, I had no idea, either.

After she left, I pulled the shades and went to bed, and woke up in time for my open studio that afternoon. I finished the piece I'd been working on before she arrived, and leaned it against the wall to dry. Then I got out my sketch book and tried to rough out an idea I'd gotten at the museum the day before.

I tried the next day, too, and the day after that. And then I went back to the museum, and wandered through the exhibit, not really paying attention to what was on the walls. I finally sat down on a bench, and looked at whatever was in front of me.

It was a group of sketches, and the painting they'd become, but I didn't really see them. I felt something inside me, big and painful, in the center of my chest. I couldn’t breathe. I heard my voice, 18 years old, telling the dean at PIFA that the classical disciplines can be a handicap… as if I could have known that then. As if I had any choice about it, anyway.

Something was clawing inside my throat, and I closed my eyes for a second. Behind my eyelids, everything burned red against black, the lines and angles of my abstract paintings suddenly making sense to me in a way they never had before, structure inside of formlessness. 

My ears were ringing and my heart was pounding, and I didn’t know how to contain it, this impulse to draw something that was inside my brain and trying to get to my hand, but I knew that if I tried, if I touched the pencil and tried to get it out, that my hand would cramp and shake and drop the pencil. 

If this had been a movie, right then someone would have seen me – a teacher, a student from the university, someone – and asked me if I was all right.

But this was real life, and there was no one there but me. And nothing but some sketches, and a painting on a wall.


	7. Directions, Chapter 7

**Directions, Chapter 7**  
By Xie  
 _  
"All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware."_ – Martin Buber

**Brian's POV**

Cynthia shifted slightly in her chair. I started paying attention again, since that meant she was about to say something, which probably meant someone was going to get his ass handed to him.

Which was, of course, my favorite spectator sport.

But it was actually Theodore who spoke first. "And when do you propose to have the alternate storyboards finalized?"

The unfortunate target of Ted's question glanced quickly at the art director, who shifted her gaze to her laptop.

"Well…" he faltered. "After the holidays?"

Cynthia sighed. He looked stricken.

"If you can have them tonight, we can look at them," she said. "But…"

She stopped talking. I looked up, and realized that every person at the conference table was looking at the door.

I don't know why I wasn't surprised at what I saw. I stood up, nodded at Cynthia, smiled blandly at everyone else, strode to the door and dragged Justin out into the hallway by the collar of his snow-dusted winter jacket.  
 **  
Justin's POV**

There were a lot of things that were hard about being in London.

It's not that I didn't love it. I did. But it was one thing to love it when I was arguing with Jense and Mark at the pub, or showing Kalli my studio, or talking to the students who came to my open studio -- or standing in the filtered light from that wall of glass, brush in my hand, the canvas taking the paint like it was thirsty for it. Like every stroke was perfect.

Like I could have done it all night, and into the next day, and never missed eating or sleeping or even sex.

It was another thing to be in London when it all went to fuck. Because the city was still as exciting, and the light was just as perfect, and everyone still expected me to talk and argue and laugh. And paint.

I even missed things that annoyed me at home, like Debbie shoving food at me when she thought something was wrong. As if a lemon bar could have fixed my hand, or a good American diner meal scraped scar tissue out of my brain.

I'd said something like that when I was on the phone with Brian one morning, but when I got to the part about Deb and lemon bars, he cut me off. "Did you ever see the acupuncturist you were talking about?"

I'd been standing in the kitchen, phone tucked against my shoulder, making espresso on the stovetop. "This isn't because my hand is tired." I poured the thick coffee into a cup, a little swirl of creamy bubbles on the surface. "I just… don't have the motor control to do what I want to do."

He was quiet, and then he asked me a random question about an ad campaign he was working on. I wished I could see his face. He didn't usually change the subject like that unless he thought I was indulging in self-pity or a drama queen moment, or I'd touched a nerve.

If I could have seen his face, I'd have known which one it was.

I scraped my thumbnail across my teeth, and listened to him tell me about the most recent fuck-up in the art department, and a contractor he was considering either suing or pushing off the roof of Babylon.

Before I left London for the holidays, I finished the painting I'd been working on, and then spent the rest of the week looking at graphics programs online. I almost emailed Adrienne, and then thought, right. I'm going to ask someone who can move a few fingers and her face if she has any suggestions for software that will let me draw like Michelangelo.

It didn't even matter that I wasn't painting. The students were too busy with exams to do anything but study, and Mark and Jense had gone to her parents' in Amsterdam until the New Year. Shen was quieter than usual when I passed him in the hall or on the path, his eyes vacant and distracted, his fingers stained with blue glaze.

I probably should have just gone home early, but my ticket was for the 21st, so that's when I left.

I had a window seat on my flight home, but the gray clouds under the plane's shadow didn't remind me of anything at all.

When I landed at JFK, there was a flight boarding for Pittsburgh just as I got through customs. I made sad eyes at the agent at the desk, and because I didn't have any luggage, she managed to get me on. I almost called Brian, but at the last minute, I stuffed my cell phone in the pocket of my jacket, and stuffed my jacket in the overhead bin.

It was snowing in Pittsburgh when I walked out of the terminal, and I had to wait 45 minutes for a cab. When I got to Kinnetik, I realized I'd forgotten about the expansion. The annex had been finished for months, but I'd remembered it like it used to be when Brian first opened it, kind of raw and warehouse-like, not with three walls of windows, light spilling out onto the street.

One thing had definitely not changed. Brian had his mouth on mine before we'd said a word, my back slammed against the wall, his thigh pressing against my crotch.

"Brian…" I could hardly breathe, my hands on his shoulders, his in my hair. "Aren't there…"

I couldn't even remember what I'd meant to say when I felt his tongue probing my lips. I just opened my mouth and let him in.

Someone brushed past us in the hall, and he pulled me through the nearest door. It could have been someone's cubicle, or the janitor's closet, or the fucking Xerox room; I couldn't have cared less. His cock was straining against mine through our pants, his hips moving with a pressure that almost lifted me off my feet on the up-thrust.

Brian grunted into my mouth, and I felt an explosion of heat in my balls, and the jerk of his cock against mine that told me he was coming, too.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," he hissed against my hair. "Fuck."

Brian pulled away a little, just enough so I could drop down off my toes. I put my hands on his upper arms; I felt dizzy for a second.

I licked my lips, swallowed, and tried to get a few words out. "Hi."

He laughed, a little breathy himself. "Hi."

I cleared my throat and tried again. "Was that an important meeting?"

His brow furrowed. "What meeting?"

I bumped my nose against his, and smiled. "Nothing. Let's go."

We were halfway home before he looked at me sharply. "Wasn't I picking you up at the airport in three hours?"

I nodded. "I wanted to surprise you."

He laughed. "Yeah, well, you surprised the fuck out of everyone in that meeting." He paused. "Whatever it was."

I looked out the window. There was snow piled at the sides of the roadway and layered on the branches of the trees. Here and there, houses you couldn't see in the summer appeared, trimmed in holiday lights, surrounded by what were no doubt driveways and lawns but looked like endless fields of snow.

"I forgot how pretty it was out here."

He made a non-committal sound. "If you go for that kind of thing. Norman Rockwell, Currier and Ives, Justin Taylor." He glanced sideways at me. "One of those things is not like the other."

I laughed. "Please. Since when did liking to live somewhere beautiful turn me into a greeting card illustrator?"

I saw his lips fold in against a smile, but he didn't say anything. I shifted in my seat. "Did you miss me?"

He nodded. "With all the depth and passion of a Hallmark card."

"Good." I laid my hand on this thigh. "Because I don't get my jeans all jizzed up for just anyone, you know."

"Is that considered the modern standard of true love?"

I closed my fingers over the wet spot on his Armani slacks. "Apparently."

He laid his hand over mine, and pressed down. He was starting to get hard. "I told you I missed you."

"Yeah," I said, licking my lips. Then I pulled my hand away. "Drive. I want to live long enough to get fucked in a bed again."

He nodded, and gave the Corvette a little more gas.

**Brian's POV**

I'd been prepared for Justin to show up with dark circles under his eyes and a black cloud of depression over his head, but apparently his current artistic crisis manifested itself in extreme horniness instead of nightmares.

We spent the next ten or twelve hours fucking, with a short break for food. When I finally dragged my tongue out of his ass at three in the morning, he was mostly unconscious, his head pillowed on his folded arms, every muscle in his body completely relaxed.

"Mmmmmmm." His eyes drifted closed. "That was nice."

I ran my hand down his bare back, but he'd fallen asleep. To be fair, it was well into the next day, UK time.

I should have gone to sleep myself, but I felt keyed up and restless. I found the corner of the duvet on the floor and tugged it over him, then went downstairs.

I'd let Emmett do his holiday routine on the house again. Gus was coming for breakfast Christmas Eve morning, and seeing Justin's face light up like he was eight years old when he saw it was somewhat amusing, if not actually worth what Emmett had charged me.

"Still trying to class up the neighborhood?" Justin had said when we pulled into the driveway.

I'd just shrugged. "A futile act of rebellious taste in a world gone to shit."

He'd just laughed and climbed out of the car to gaze upon the wonder and glory that was a few lights and some hacked up tree parts and ribbon.

I had finally ventured out into the snowy wilderness to draw him inside. "It's not like you haven't seen it before."

"It's the best tree yet." His cheeks had been flushed from the cold.

"It's the most expensive tree yet." The computerized heating system had been doing its job, because a gentle wave of warmth enfolded us as we came in the front door. "I think Emmett's padding the bill based on figures leaked to him by Ted in violation of the accountant-employer relationship, which I'm fairly sure is a felony."

Justin had frowned. "I don't think there is an accountant-employer relationship. There was this episode on Law and Order…

I'd yanked him against me. "Jesus, Justin. Are we really talking about Ted when there's a bed upstairs and we haven't had sex in…" I looked at my watch… "thirty minutes?"

He'd gripped my face between his hands. "Who's Ted?"

At which point we'd gone upstairs and embarked on an effort to have all the sex in one night we hadn't had in the previous month – an effort of which I was in wholehearted support, regardless of the fact that it was, of course, futile.

I sat down at my computer and checked my email, where the question "Who's Ted?" could best be answered as, the guy whose ass I was going to fire for the snide, snickering email he'd sent me re-capping the rest of the meeting I'd missed and making vaguely obscene insinuations about how long it would be before I'd see it.

Cynthia had sent me an attached file, presumably containing something I needed to sign; I'd worry about it in the morning.

I glanced at the clock; it was twenty to four. I got a drink and carried it into the living room. The timers had long ago turned off the Christmas lights; I turned them back on and saw them flicker on the branches of the tree and in reflection in the glass. I knocked back my scotch, turned the lights off again, and went upstairs to bed.  
 **  
Justin's POV**

When I woke up my first morning in Pittsburgh, Brian was sound asleep next to me. He didn't wake up when I went to the bathroom, and his breathing didn't even change when I kissed him.

It was almost 8. I hadn't had enough sleep, but between the after-ache in my ass and the tail-end of an endorphin high, I felt great.

I made coffee and a fire in the fireplace, and checked my email in the living room. Daphne had already emailed me that morning, so I called her.

"Honey, I'm home."

"God, finally. Is your ass sore?"

"One guess."

"You can barely walk, but you don't care."

I laughed. "Close enough."

"Well, do you think you'll be able to hobble around by tomorrow? I wanted to have lunch or dinner or something, and see the lights downtown."

I'd gotten up while she was talking, and walked over to the tree. "Anything you're not telling me?"

"Well… and help me finish my last minute shopping?"

I re-adjusted the placement of an ornament. "Exactly how much shopping are we talking about here?"

Silence, then, "All of it." A pause. "Except yours. I already got that."

"Liar."

"Okay, I'll have gotten it by then. Same thing."

"Tell you what – I'll meet you at 2. I'll shop with you for no more than four hours, then we go to dinner, and anything you don't get, you're on your own."

"Deal."

"And you wrap everything."

"That's fine. I'll have the stores wrap it all."

"If you go online, you can have the stores find it and pack it and wrap it and even send it, too. You might want to try that next year."

She giggled. "What, and miss all the fun of shopping?"

I smiled into the phone. "You sound good."

"I feel good. I feel great."

"I'm really glad. No more headaches?" She hadn't complained about one in forever.

"None. Zero. And the last audiology test was normal." She giggled again. "And my jeans fit."

After I hung up the phone, I got another cup of coffee in the kitchen and carried it into my studio. I expected it to look neat and bare, but it didn't. There were big splashes of paint on my worktable, and the floors, and even the wall near the sink.

I flipped through three finished canvases leaning against the wall, and tried to remember what I'd had in mind when I painted them, but I couldn't.

I sat down at my desk with my coffee. My computer was still in the living room, so I picked up a sketchbook I'd left lying there, and opened it.

The usual sketches of Brian, of the trees outside the house, the alleyway near the diner, and one of Debbie I thought I should probably frame and give her for Christmas. She'd love it.

Halfway through, I stopped. It was a sketch I'd forgotten, but when I saw it, I didn't see how I could have. It was the fragment of a wall at the Kinnetik annex, the one with its innards still spilling out of the top, electrical wires and pipes and conduit, the plaster and lathe crumbling and bending but still held intact by some kind of architectural tension.

The desire to paint flooded into me so hard it was like the rush of E coming on. I closed my eyes, and the broken wall sketched itself inside my eyelids, and I thought… I don't know. I grabbed my coffee and left the sketchbook, and slammed the door behind me.

I was sitting with my laptop in the media room when Brian wandered in, mug in his hands, wearing nothing but a pair of sweat pants.

"Hey." His mouth tasted like coffee and toothpaste when he kissed me.

"Do we have plans for today?"

He sipped coffee and raised one eyebrow. "I have plans."

I laughed. "I mean, plans that require us to leave the house."

He shook his head. "I wasn't even planning on leaving the bedroom, but you weren't there, so…"

"I tried to wake you up. It was futile." I sighed. "I guess these things happen… at your age."

He stuck his tongue out at me. To be fair, it was still his first cup of coffee.

**Brian's POV**

We spent his first full day home in bed, unless you count the time we spent in the hot tub, the shower, and that one blow job in the kitchen.

I woke up early the next morning. Justin was still asleep, although I planned on waking him up shortly. He was supposed to be having lunch with his mother and then meeting Daphne for some quality time together in… I shuddered even to think it… downtown Pittsburgh.

Although I supposed, given the size of the check Kinnetik had recently received from the Pittsburgh Convention and Visitors Bureau, that I should probably keep that sentiment to myself.

I needed to go into the office, even though I knew from Christmases past that there would be almost no one there. Not even Cynthia.

Theodore, however, at least had his head in the game enough to have emailed me the contractor's revised dates for the delivery of the steel beams for the top floor renovation at Babylon.

I hit his number on my Blackberry. "Fuck this," I said when he picked up. "Tell him if he doesn't have the beams in there before New Year's, I'm suing his ass."

He proved resistant to my implacable logic. "He's not responsible for the weather, Bri."

"Neither are we."

"No." His voice was patient. "But we did sign a contract with a clause for unavoidable delays due to weather…"

I shoved a hand through my hair. "Fine, whatever. As long as the beams are in place by the time the glass is ready to go in, it's not going to make that much difference. But Theodore…"

"Yes?"

"No more snow."

"I'll arrange for it to be re-directed to points north. Just leave it to me."

I woke Justin up, worked out while he had breakfast, and then joined him in the shower.

"If your mother can drop you off to meet Daphne," I said, working the shampoo into a mountain of lather on top of his head, "I'll drive you into town."

He shook his head violently, like a fucking dog, and the suds sprayed all over the shower, and me. "Hey!"

He grinned and stuck his head under the water. "Okay, but let's take my car. It's snowing."

I grumbled, but agreed.

He was drying off with a big mocha-colored towel when he paused, looked at me, and frowned. "Are you going to work today? It's the day before Christmas Eve."

"What the fuck is that, Christmas Eve Eve? I don't seem to have that on my calendar."

"Will anyone even be at the office?"

"I'll be there," I told him, pulling on a pale grey shirt. "And really, who else matters?"

"No one, until you need a latte or something photocopied."

I threw a sock at him. It missed.

I dropped him at the restaurant to meet Jennifer, and headed for the office. I could have worked from the house, but there was something about all that empty space, and me sitting in one little part of it hunched over my laptop, that felt kind of pathetic.

The rooftop renovation for Babylon was running slightly behind schedule, but it was progressing at the speed of light compared to how long it was taking the city to approve plans for renovating the two newly-acquired buildings on either side of the club.

We'd brought in a number of architects, but every single one proposed some variation of the same thing: luxury condos, dubbed lofts simply to save them the cost of enclosing the duct work or running the walls all the way to the ceiling, with ground floor commercial space.

Then one day, a young woman with a tight Afro and gigantic hoop earrings strode into the office. She'd been recommended by, of all people, Leo Brown; his son had known her in college. She lived in Chicago, and the proposal she laid on my desk was like nothing I'd seen from anyone else, including architects with decades more experience and triple her fee.

"This isn't New York," she'd said bluntly. Before I thanked her for the geography lesson, she'd gone on. "In New York, even in Chicago, there would be enough hip young gay men to buy condos next to Babylon. But not here."

I already knew that. I also already knew the next thing she said, that going too high-end in the Pitts would end in disaster if the market went down.

"I've done condo projects next to industrial parks and factories in Cleveland and Cincinnati," she said, ignoring my involuntary shudder at the mention of two of the few cities lower than Pittsburgh on the food chain. "By shooting instead for a 'high-end-wannabe' market with quality construction, state-of-the-art sound control, and views, but skipping the amenities no one in an urban center cares about, like concierges and latte bars and even a gym, you insulate yourself not just from the noise of Babylon, but also from anything other than a catastrophic market collapse."

I'd taken her proposal for a combination of mid-range condos and what she called "low-noise buffer zone commercial development" to Jennifer's boss, Kenneth Rollins.

He looked the plan over, and shook his head. "I didn't really think there was anything new in mixed-use," he told me. "It's fantastic. Do it."

He may have loved it. I may have loved it. Ted, Cynthia, Jennifer, Justin – hell, every living person in Pittsburgh may have loved it, but the city was making noises about parking and the visual impact of her sound deflection system for outdoor areas, and I was seriously ready to burn the fucking buildings down for the insurance money – a course Theodore told me was, inexplicably, against several laws.

I finally finished my notes on the city's most recent series of helpful suggestions, and slammed them off in an email to Ted.

I looked out the high windows in my office; the snow was starting to pile up against them, and it was almost dark.

I pulled out my phone. "Mikey. Have you had dinner?"

He laughed. "No. Were you offering to bring something by?"

"Were you under the impression I've turned into Deb?"

The cash register rang in the background. "Okay, that's a vision I'd rather not have stuck in my head."

I went to the shop, and dropped onto the ratty sofa in the back, a copy of the latest issue of Rage in my hands. "When does the new issue come out? The fans must be suffering, considering where you left me. Him."

Michael leaned in the doorway. "What do you care? I know Justin already showed the next issue to you. He always does."

I shrugged. "He may have mentioned it."

Michael rolled his eyes. "The new issue will be out in January. And the whole world can finally know if Rage gets his sanity back, or if he plummets to his death from the roof of Babylon…"

"His lair," I corrected him. "He's outside his lair."

Michael walked over and plucked the comic out of my hands. "That's my last copy. Don't mess it up." He grinned at me. "So, where's Justin? I thought you'd still be in the reunion sex phase."

I half-stood and grabbed the comic back from him, then sat down and started reading it again. "Justin had lunch with Jennifer, and now he and Daphne are buying things and, I believe, visiting Santa to have their photos taken."

Another group of customers came in, and Michael went back to the cash register. I pilfered a few other comics, and was deep in a story about a mutant teenager who could cause volcanic eruptions by resonating with the planet's energy waves, or some shit like that, when Michael sat down next to me on the sofa.

"So, what are you doing at Babylon for New Year's Eve?"

I kept reading. "I believe we're going to serve alcoholic beverages to shirtless homosexuals while very loud music is being played."

He took the comic away. "I mean, to beat out the new club."

I took it back. "Nothing."

"Nothing?" His voice had gone an octave higher. "How can you do nothing?"

"I do 'nothing' remarkably well," I informed him. "Particularly when it's the best possible course of action."

"Brian… you can't just let him…"

I stood up. "Jesus, Michael. You've been going on and on about this ever since he ran those ads. Get over it."

Michael stood up. "You have something planned. Don't bullshit me."

I sighed. "All I have planned for New Year's Eve is becoming intoxicated and shoving my dick up Justin's ass at midnight."

"Well," Michael said, "I suppose that might draw a crowd."

**Justin's POV**

Daphne and I ate dinner up on Mount Washington, and I called Brian when we were finished. "Where are you?"

"At Woody's," he shouted over the music. "Where are you?"

"We just finished dinner. I'll have Daph drop me there."

Brian was playing pool with Michael, while a few guys waited patiently for their turn at the table. Brian was ignoring them. He was also pretty drunk.

I kissed him. "Tell me where my car is before you get too drunk to remember."

"It's in front of the store," Michael said as Brian took his shot.

I got a beer and watched them play. "And here I imagined you slaving away at Kinnetik all day."

Brian sank two balls with one shot, and glanced at me. "We also slave who only sit and drink."

Michael and I both stared at him. "Okay," Michael said. "You're cut off."

Brian just snorted and took another shot. This one missed. "Huh. Maybe that's not a bad idea."

We left an hour later. "I need to stop by the loft," Brian said as we got in the car. "One of Gus' presents is there."

I pulled away from the curb. "What is Gus' present doing at the loft?"

He was deeply engrossed in flipping through the satellite stations. "I left it there the day _someone_ arrived early. I thought I'd have time to stop there before I picked you up. Fucking shit holiday music."

I let him rant until I got to the loft. He was busily kissing me and unfastening my jeans while we rode to the top floor. Unfortunately he wasn't as adept with the keys as with my zipper, so I took them away from him, and unlocked the door.

He went into the bathroom while I wandered around the loft. It was clean, with everything in its place, just like always. I opened the refrigerator door; it was well-stocked with beer, water and, surprisingly, a few take-out boxes. Usually the cleaning lady threw those out. I was putting them in a trash bag when Brian emerged, a shopping bag in his hand.

The drive out to the house took almost an hour by the time we got past the mall and the turnoff for the airport. Brian had stopped complaining about the music and had his head back and his eyes closed, so I put a holiday station on, the volume low.

Lindsay and Melanie stopped by with the kids the next morning, and, to his credit, a very hung-over Brian winced only slightly at Gus' shriek of "Daddy!" at the front door. Michael and Ben showed up a few minutes later, Debbie with them, and by the time they'd eaten, drunk, made merry, gathered up their piles of presents and headed out, I was ready to go back to bed.

I threw myself down on the sofa next to Brian. "If I ever suggest we have children…"

He nodded. "I'll just have Gus and JR come spend a few days. That should do it."

I ran my hand over his thigh. "Whatever shall we do for the next 24 hours?"

He didn't turn to look at me, just slid his arm along the back of the sofa, smiling.

Christmas morning was cold. Every day since I'd gotten home had been cold, but the thermometer on the outside of the garage read 3 degrees.

I came into the kitchen and dropped my jacket on a chair. "I thought it was cold in London."

"What the fuck were you doing out there?" Brian poured a cup of coffee and held it out to me.

I took it, and blew across the top. "I wanted to see how cold it was."

"There is such a thing as the Weather Channel."

"I wanted to know the temperature here, not in generic Pittsburgh."

We weren't burdened with gifts or food and it was too cold to snow, so we took the Corvette to Debbie's. The roads were clear, but everywhere I looked it was painfully white, even the bare trees glazed over with ice.

Not to mention the bondage elves on Debbie's front lawn, who looked like perverted little snow lumps.

I filled my plate at the table, and sat next to Ben on the sofa.

"Welcome home," he said, then took a bite of turkey. "I hope you're having a good time in London."

I sipped some wine. "It's exciting." Then I changed the subject. "How are you doing? Michael said the experimental therapy's going great."

I already knew all about it, but I let him tell me anyway, while I ate.

"Want some more wine?" It was Michael, a bottle in one hand, Jenny Rebecca slung under the other arm.

I laughed and held out my glass. "You won't be able to hold her like that next year."

He bounced her, and she shrieked happily. "I guess not." Then he grinned. "But Ben will," he said, dropping her into his lap.

Ben picked her up and stood her on his thighs. "I can't think of anything I'd rather do."

I almost made a remark decidedly unfit for the ears of a three-year-old, but caught myself just in time.

Michael perched on the arm of the sofa next to Ben, and JR grabbed onto his arm and laughed. "I was babysitting her the other day, while Mel and Lindsay went to some holiday thing at Gus' school," he said. "Ted was at the diner, and he asked if I could run something to Brian, so I went over there. I put her down, and within one minute she's marching around the loft, waving around a set of wrist restraints."

Everyone laughed. Brian was sitting on the floor with Gus, playing some sort of electronic game, and didn't even look up. "Did I invite you and your spawn over? I would have locked away the toys if you'd told me you were coming."

I rolled my eyes. "Please. Remember the time that Gus…"

A hand clapped over my mouth from behind, and Melanie's voice said, "Children present."

I swatted her away, laughing.

We got home early, around nine. I was in the bedroom changing into sweats and a t-shirt when Brian walked in, a glass of scotch in each hand. I took one, and touched its rim to his.

"Merry Christmas," I said, and swallowed.

He took a sip of his drink. "Are you donning now your gay apparel?"

"Says the man who built a closet the size of my studio to hold his designer clothes."

He put his drink down on the bedside table, his other hand unfastening his pants. They dropped to the floor, his shirt following, and he stepped away from the pile of fabric at his feet. "Better?"

I felt my face break into a smile. "That's some very, very gay non-apparel you have going on there, Mr. Kinney."

He stood there, his eyes getting darker while his cock slowly filled and lifted. I felt my breathing change and my face start to flush, and I stripped off the clothes I'd just put on.

Brian's mouth was hot and smelled like scotch. He kissed me, then nipped at my lower lip, holding my hands together over my head while he pulled the skin on my throat into his mouth. Then his tongue and teeth were dragging over my nipples, and one of his hands was pushing my legs apart, and I was moaning and trying to pull my hands out of his grip.

He bit the skin over my hip, and I hissed at the sudden pain, but it washed away in a rush of pleasure as he sucked the head of my dick slowly into his mouth. He kept sucking, not sliding his mouth down the shaft but teasing the slit and the sensitive spot under the rim with his tongue, his spit-wet fingers sliding back and forth on my perineum.

When he finally let me turn over, the sheet felt rough on my aching cock. I tried to work my hand underneath my groin, but he tugged back on my hips, forcing me up onto my knees, and buried his face in my ass.

It was too much licking and biting and teasing. I wanted him to fuck me, and I told him so, my voice rough.

He laughed, and draped himself over my back, rubbing the head of his dripping cock in circles over my hole. "Like this?"

I shook my head into the pillow, and felt him move away for a second, then come back. He didn't use his fingers, just pressed the blunt head of his lubed dick against my hole, pressing in slowly and steadily, without pausing even when I almost couldn't take it, not until he was into me so deep his balls slapped against my skin.

He pulled back, the head of his cock still barely inside me, my asshole stretched tightly around it. "Like _this_?" he said, his voice rougher than mine had been, and drove all the way into me in one fast thrust, stroking across my prostate and making cold chills and hot sweat break out on my skin.

I reached behind and tried to pull him tight into me, to hold him still for just a second, but he kept moving, not teasing me anymore at all, just riding that one spot over and over until I couldn't see, or breathe, or stop. Everything went quiet and tense, and I felt that burning ball inside me contract and then blow out, pulsing in waves of hot come all over the bed.

My fingers were digging so deep into his thigh I'd probably broken the skin, but he didn't stop, just drove in deep and pulled away two more times, then shoved in as far as he could one last time and shot inside me, filling me so full it hurt and burned.

When I dropped to the mattress, he pulled me a little towards him, away from the slick mess I'd left on the sheets.

I guess I fell asleep. I wasn't sure what woke me, or even how much time had passed. I was wide awake, and I thought I must have been having a nightmare, because my heart was pounding. But Brian was sleeping, half-on and half-off my back, his hand still lying on my outstretched arm.

"Brian?"

He moved a little. "Hmmm?"

I shifted under him, and turned my head. "I want to get up."

The mattress dipped as he rolled off me. I walked towards the bathroom, stopping to finish the scotch in my glass next to the bed.

I looked in the mirror after I peed. I had a bite mark on my neck that would be black and blue in the morning, and a small red crescent on my hip. I washed my face and brushed my teeth, and put my toothbrush back into the holder.

An elongated rectangle of light from the bathroom cut across the bed, leaving Brian's upper body in the shadows. I switched off the light, and now his face was brighter than his legs, lit by the little bit of moonlight outside the window.

"Brian?"

"Come back to bed." He sounded more than half asleep.

"Have you been living at the loft?"

He sat up, a confused look on his face, the imprint of the pillow creasing his face. "What?"

"Have you been living at the loft?"

He looked at me. "I've stayed there a few nights. You know that."

I kept my voice patient. "How many?"

"How many what?"

"Nights. How many nights have you stayed there in the month since you got back from Paris?"

He didn't answer right away. "I don't know. Most of them."

I walked to the other side of the bed, and pulled my sweat pants on. "Great. Thanks for telling me."

He shoved his hand through his hair. "What the fuck difference does it make? I've had to be at Babylon late at night, and then first thing in the morning. What the fuck is your problem?"

I pulled open a drawer and grabbed a sweater. "My _problem_ ," I said, tugging it over my head, "is that we agreed not to give up who we are to make the other person happy." I slammed the drawer and shoved my feet into my sneakers. "If you don't want to live here, if you're living here just for me…"

He got out of bed and grabbed my arm. He looked furious. "Are we actually fighting about where I sleep when you're not here?"

I turned and faced him, and my face felt stiff. "No, you asshole, we're fighting about where you sleep when I _am_ here." I jerked my arm away, and banged the door shut on my way out of the room.

**Brian's POV**

I was halfway down the stairs before I stopped. I was angry. So angry it was pounding in my ears. My skin felt like it was crackling.

The pillows and duvet were still heaped on the floor when I went back into the bedroom. I picked them up and made the bed, then sat on the edge. I sat there for a long time, and then I turned off the light, crawled under the cover, and tried to sleep.

I don't know how long I was out, but it was still dark when I opened my eyes. He hadn't come back.

I didn't intend to search every fucking bedroom looking for him, but I didn't have to. He was where I'd have predicted he'd be, sound asleep on the living room sofa. The Christmas lights were off, and he hadn't turned on the fire.

I stood there in the dark, my bare feet cold on the hardwood. After a while, I realized he'd opened his eyes.

"I don't want to live here _for_ you." My voice didn't sound angry, just cold. "I want to live here _with_ you." I swallowed. "It's not the same."

He sat up. "I know."

Great. "Then what the fuck?" I raked my hand through my hair, and heard my words just hanging there for a long time.

He sighed, and dropped his head into his hands. I half wanted to sit down and hold him, but I was still too pissed off. "I'm sorry. I just…" He stopped.

I waited.

His eyes were blue, even in the dim light. He took a breath, and pushed the blanket that was still half-covering him onto the floor.

Finally he stood up, walked around the sofa and came and stood in front me. "I don't really care if you stay at the loft. It's not that."

"What, then?"

"It's, you know…" he said, and then he huffed a frustrated breath. "This." And he jerked his right hand. "My fucking hand, and the painting, god, I know it's stupid. I know it doesn't matter, I just… "

He was breathing hard. There was a time this would have made him cry. Did make him cry. But what was making his voice shake was anger, not tears.

The sky outside the windows was absolutely dark, but I could still see his face. He looked at me, held my eyes, and then brought his hand down, hard, on the back of the sofa. "I'm so fucking sick of this."

He smashed it down again, and I grabbed his arm. "Stop it."

He was still breathing hard, his fists clenched. We stood there staring at each other.

"Justin…"

He jerked his arm away and walked out of the room.

This time, I followed him. "Break something if you want to. I don't fucking care. But don't just… bottle this shit up."

He stopped, but didn't turn around. "That's ironic, coming from you of all people."

I came up behind him, and put my hands on his upper arms. "Yeah. Which is why you should listen to me."

He turned around. "I know this is stupid."

"It's not."

"I just want to do this thing. I know I could have done it, I can't stop wanting to do it…"

I made my voice firm. "You'll find a way."

He shook his head, and laughed, bitterly. "Yeah. Right. Would you say the same thing to Adrienne?"

"You're not Adrienne," I said.

"I fucking know that. But it's the same problem. I don't have the ability to do this. I really don't. That part of my brain, the part that tells my hand what to do, my fine motor control? It's gone, Brian. It's full of…"

"I know." I took his right hand in both of mine, even though he resisted me. "You'll find a way."

"I haven't found one yet." He stopped trying to pull his hand away. "What makes you so sure I will?"

"Because," I said, letting my fingers hold his lightly, "you always do. It's what you do. It's who you are."

He stared at me for a long, long time. I didn't look away, even when I wanted to.

**Justin's POV**

He was careful with me all day. I wished he wouldn't be, but I'd learned the general futility of that when I was getting over meningitis. I just let him work it out.

It had risen all the way to 11 degrees outside, so I went for a walk. At the last minute, I went into my studio and got my sketchpad and some pencils, and went down the icy path towards the little hidden playground.

I stopped halfway there, by the bench and rocks that were one of my favorite places to sketch. And he found me there half an hour later, his knit cap pulled down low on his forehead, a black scarf wound high on his face.

"Are you sure you wouldn't rather sketch, I don't know, the hot tub or the fireplace?" He sat down next to me on the bench, flinching as the cold soaked through his wool coat.

I shrugged. "I'm okay." It was a little awkward sketching with gloves on, but it's not like I didn't have a hundred sketches just like this one already. I didn't want to try anything new just then.

He moved closer to me, and I almost snapped at him not to hover, when I realized he was just cold. I laughed, put down the pencil, and shifted around to face him.

Our foreheads were touching. "This is crazy," he said. "Come back up to the house." He bumped my nose. "I'll let you draw my dick."

I laughed, and he pulled me off the bench.

When we were halfway to the house, I said, "Let's go dancing tonight."

He seemed to consider. "Anywhere in particular?"

I slapped at his hip with my gloved hand. "Asshole."

"Is that a new club? Kinky name." He stopped abruptly and spun me around. I kissed him, only our breath warm in the frigid air.

We went out to dinner at an Italian place near PIFA we'd always liked, and then went to Babylon. It was still early, and there wasn't much of a crowd. He'd gestured towards the bar when we walked out onto the main floor, but I shook my head, pulling him out into the lights and music.

I'd missed dancing while I was in London. Missed the kind of dancing that was like fucking, missed him kissing my face and hair and neck while the beat shook the floor. All I'd had was a little bit of wine, but it still felt like I was flying.

He took me up on the roof to see the construction, but the wind blew a wall of snow in our faces as soon as he opened the door. We ran back down, laughing, and this time, when he offered me a drink, I took it.

I felt the Chivas burn its way over my tongue and down my throat. His tongue slipped between my lips, and we kissed for a long time.

The club was crowded when we finally left. While we were waiting for our coats, a drag queen came in, letting a thrift store fur drip off her shoulders while she waited her turn. She smiled at me, and I realized I knew her face – she'd been a model for Brian's ads for Babylon.

Brian nodded to her as we walked past, and she gave him a sultry smile.

I pulled my knit cap over my ears as we walked through the doors. "Did she make the cut?"

He glanced backwards. "Allegra? Yes."

I nodded. "When do the ads start running?"

He opened the car door. "Two weeks."

He'd been emailing them to me, beautiful slick art shots in just-barely-not-black-and-white, featuring every hot shirtless guy and glamorous drag queen he could find on the dance floor at Babylon – and a handful of women, too, a tough muscled dyke in a leather vest and her long-haired femme girlfriend, and a painfully romantic one of two young girls dancing together, half in shadows, half out.

I got in, and shut the door against the cold. Unfortunately, it wasn't any warmer inside the car. "Hurry up and turn on the heat."

He rolled his eyes. "There won't be any heat for a few minutes, Justin. I know you're not familiar with the intricacies of the internal combustion engine, but…"

"Shut up. Start the car. Drive. I'm freezing."

He laughed, and turned the key. The engine roared to life; he must have had it in the shop recently.

He turned at the corner near the diner, and I glanced at him. "So, did the HIV one make the cut?"

The dashboard lights lit up his face, and I could see him raise an eyebrow. "I'm still not sure."

"It's the best one," I said.

"I'm going to have a few people look at it."

I nodded my head. "Ben? Michael? Deb?"

He shrugged.

When we got home, he vanished into the media room, and I went upstairs to change. At the last minute I took a shower, and washed the sweat and smoke and glitter off my skin.

He was a little stoned when I got downstairs, and I took a hit on the joint he offered me. I held it a long time, then slowly let the smoke out, feeling dizzy.

He pulled me down onto the sofa next to him, and kissed me with a mouth that tasted of booze and pot. I broke away and re-lit the joint, offering it to him while I held another lungful of smoke.

I let it out. "I want to go into the other room…"

He rolled his eyes and held his breath, then slowly released the smoke. "And make a fire and watch the tree. You're a fucking hopeless romantic."

I put my hand on his half-hard cock, and kissed him. "You love it." I let our noses touch. "Come on."

He followed me into the other room, detouring past the bar to grab a bottle of Scotch. He sat and watched me make the fire, and then brought the bottle over to me.

The heat was burning into my legs while his mouth brushed across mine, and I sighed.

"Hmmm?" His hand slipped inside my pants.

I rested my forehead against his chest, and felt the pot and booze and the pressure of his fingers course through me for a while. "This is harder than I thought."

He pulled my hand down to his cock. "This?"

I pressed against it, and felt it jerk against my palm. "Yes. But no."

"Well, that made no sense whatsoever."

I walked over to the sofa. "Being apart for so long. It's harder than I thought it would be." He sat down next to me, and I looked at him. "And I already thought it would be hard."

He leaned towards the coffee table, and lit a new joint. "I told you before you left. It's just nine months out of our lives."

"I know you said that." He offered me the joint, and I shook my head. "I know you meant it, and I know you mean it now. But meaning it and living through it aren't the same. This is hard."

He didn't answer me, just took another drag on the joint. Then he pushed me against the arm of the sofa, and nuzzled into my crotch.

It felt good, and warm, and I let him tug down my sweatpants. But after I'd come in his mouth, and he'd licked me clean and pulled them up again, I touched his hair. "Sex doesn't really fix anything, does it?"

He sat up. "Well, it fixes horniness."

"Huh. True. Are you horny?"

Brian gave me a look, and I grinned at him. "I mean, is that part of the problem?"

He kept staring at me, then said, slowly, like he was talking to an idiot, "Justin, I'm horny when I go to bed at night, I'm horny when I get up in the morning. I'm horny during business meetings, while working on pitches and accounts, and nineteen seconds after I finish jerking off. And based on the number of late night masturbatory phone calls I get from you, I'm guessing you, too, are feeling the slings and arrows of sexual frustration."

He put his hand on the back of my neck, and gestured towards his crotch. "Now, I'm aware that it won't fix your hand, or drive Richard Bohling to bankruptcy, or get the fucking contractor to stay on schedule. But there is one thing I know: a blowjob will absolutely fix the horniness problem."

"For an hour," I said, lowering my head and opening his pants.

"Give yourself more credit." He gasped as my lips touched his dick. "An hour and a half."

The rest of the week was pretty much like that. The whole visit was, actually – sex and a little talking, then more sex. We went downtown on New Year's Eve, and I hung out at the diner with Daphne while Brian attempted to assuage his inner control freak by interfering with how everyone was doing his job at the club.

He came to the diner to get me, and eat the rest of my french fries, and tell Daphne completely untrue stories about his sexual prowess.

She loved it.

"Are you sure you don't want to come to Babylon?" I asked her when I finally stood up to pull on my coat.

"Half-naked men and all you can drink," Brian promised. "No charge."

She shook her head. "I'm going to ring in the new year with someone who'll want to kiss me as much as I want to kiss him," she said. "But thanks."

Brian raised his eyebrow. "Little Daphne has a date?"

"Little Daphne is six weeks older than your darling," she said, and tossed her head. "And yes."

Brian brushed imaginary crumbs off his shirt. "Anyone I know?"

She glared at me. "You told him."

I held up my hand. "I swear I didn't."

"Hah!" Brian looked triumphant. "I thought so. Alfe told me Bohling offered him a gig, and I thought he'd be sniffing around again."

She wrinkled her nose. "Sniffing around. Lovely." She put a few dollars for Kiki on the table, and pulled her hood over her hair. "Happy New Year, Justin." She kissed me, then stood on her toes and brushed one over Brian's cheek. "And you too, Brian."

I went to use the rest room before we left – however unsanitary it was, it was better than the one at Babylon. While I was waiting, I heard a couple of guys raving about the new club.

When we got out to the sidewalk, I told Brian, but he just shrugged. "Are you surprised?"

I shook my head. "No. But…" I glanced at him. "No."

He had an enigmatic smile on his lips, but he didn't say anything.

When we got to Babylon, there was a line around the block and a doorman letting guys in one or two at a time.

Brian laughed at the look on my face. "Had you forgotten?"

"Yeah. I had, actually." I eyed the length of the line. "This must have cost a fortune."

He shrugged again. "Just part of the cost of doing business." He guided me up the stairs and into the club.

It was packed, of course. I was fairly sure half or more of the guys in there were model-slash-actors from New York and Los Angeles, but they looked like, well, the kind of guys who filled the clubs in New York and LA.

"Let's go see the roof."

Brian lifted an eyebrow. "It hasn't changed since the last time you were up there. There's apparently an ironclad union law that absolutely no work can be done between Christmas and New Year's Day."

I nodded. "So you've said ten or twenty million times. But I didn't really see it last time. Too windy, remember?"

He heaved a martyred sigh, but followed me to retrieve our coats before we went upstairs.

There wasn't any wind this time, but it was breathtakingly cold. The half-built steel frame looked like it was made out of ice, and snow had blown into piles over all the construction debris. And behind it all, the downtown skyline sliced into the frigid sky, the air so cold the lights didn't even twinkle.

Brian's arms slid around me from behind.

"They're going to love it," I told him, my head tipped back so I could see his face.

"Who will?"

I looked back at the skyline. "The fags of Pittsburgh."

He snorted, and pulled me more firmly against him. "I had hoped to set the bar quite a bit higher than that, Sunshine."

I smiled. " _I'll_ love it."

His chin was resting on my hair. "Better."

I looked at his face again. "You'll love it."

He dropped a kiss on my hair. "Ah. Well." He folded his lip in for a second. " 'Love' is a little strong, don't you think? It's just a roof, and a view."

I turned around and looked at him. The wind was making my eyes water, and his, too, but I put my hands on the sides of his face, and kissed him.

His lips felt cold, but his tongue was hot inside my mouth, and my cock started to fill against Brian's thigh.

He felt it, and laughed. "It's a little cold, but if you insist…"

I smacked his arm. "You're out of your mind. It must be ten below up here."

He draped his arm across my shoulder, and steered me towards the door to the stairs. "It seems tragically early for the honeymoon to be over." He pulled the heavy door open. "Either that, or you're coming off your peak years. These things happen." He slanted his eyes at me. "Or so I've heard."

The minute we got inside, I pushed him against the stairway wall and slipped my hand inside his coat and then his pants. His balls were warm and heavy in my palm, and I gently squeezed them.

He made a sound between a groan and a hiss.

I squeezed again. "Let's go home. We can discuss who's off his peak later."

It was hot in the club, especially with our coats on, as we threaded our way through the crowds on our way to the door. Before we were halfway there, the lights started flashing, confetti started dropping, and from the stage, a glittering drag queen and three buff guys in jockstraps started counting backwards from 10.

Brian looked at me. "Ooops," he said.

We kissed while they played a scratchy recording of "Auld Lang Syne," and kept kissing after it blended into an electronically sampled mash-up of the same song.

When we finally got out to the sidewalk, the air was so cold it hurt my lungs. We walked to Brian's car, his arm draped lazily across my shoulders, the wind whipping snow against our feet with every step.


	8. Directions, Chapter 8

**Directions, Chapter 8  
By Xie**

****"Without a trace of irony I can say I have been blessed with brilliant enemies. I owe them a great debt, because they redoubled my energies and drove me in new directions." -E. O. Wilson  
 **  
Justin's POV**

Before I left Pittsburgh after Christmas, I swore I was going to kill the next person who asked if I missed Brian when I was in London.

"No," I said calmly to Daphne. "I'm totally over him now."

The look on her face was worth it, even if she did dump her soda in my fries.

When Emmett asked, I told him, "It's not so much that I miss _Brian_ , exactly, but I definitely have to get a bigger dildo before I go back." I took a sip of my beer when he started freaking out, and wandered away while Ted explained it was a joke. I'm not entirely sure Em was convinced.

Lindsay, Melanie, Ben, Debbie, even my mother, all asked me as some form of bizarre small talk – pretty much everyone except Carl, who avoided all emotionally charged subject matter on principle, and Michael, who would have never asked a stupid question like that.

"It's not that I _don't_ miss you," I said to Brian as we drove the short distance from Debbie's to Babylon after dinner on New Year’s night. "But fuck me if I'm going to whine about it every other sentence."

"I'll fuck you even if you _do_ whine about it," Brian said helpfully. "But of course, I'll have to shove something in your mouth first, because whining..."

I patted his knee. "Makes your dick soft. I know."

Babylon was not the hot throbbing mass of half-naked men filling the dance floor and waiting six-deep at the bar that it had been the night before. Of course, those ranks had been swollen by guys who had been bought and paid for by Brian to make sure Babylon was crowded on the biggest night of the year.

And, of course, to prevent Richard Bohling from being able to claim victory for his new club.

After dinner that night at Deb's, Ted had reported, in a gloom-laden voice, that the old ice house, currently dubbed 345 after its street number, had been packed to the rafters.

Brian hadn't cared. "Richard broke into his piggy bank, too," he'd said.

"I don't know, Bri..." Ted had begun.

"I do," Brian had told him. "One of the guys I tried to rent wanted to get into a bidding war." He'd gazed at his beer bottle as if it fascinated him, and then said in a confidential tone, "I don't know why he thought I'd bother, because his dick isn't _that_ big."

At Babylon, Brian got us two shots each, with a beer chaser, and we leaned on the bar watching the sparse crowd dancing in the sparkling glitter cloud.

"Well," he said after a while, setting his bottle on the bar. "This is fucking depressing."

I put mine down, too. "Let's go on the roof."

He frowned. "You couldn't get down from there fast enough last night."

"You were trying to take my clothes off and it was ten degrees below zero with the wind chill," I pointed out, pulling him toward the stairs. "It's practically summer tonight."

"It's in the 30s," Brian objected, but I ignored him.

We went past the security guard standing at the bottom of the stairs to the roof, and Brian used his key to open the door. I walked out first, and stopped.

"What did I tell you?" Brian was standing close behind me, his hands on my shoulders. "It hasn't changed."

I looked out at the rivers and bridges, and the lights of Mount Washington in the distance. Then I glanced at the edge of the roof, which was barricaded by a construction fence. "Poor Rage, trembling on the brink..."

Brian kissed the back of my neck. "Waiting for JT to save him..."

"Again," I said.

He snorted. "Well, that's why it's called fiction." He kissed my neck again, and said, "Let me show you something."

We walked around to the other side of a pile of construction debris and the wall that surrounded the stairway. There was a series of partial walls, a little like a maze, forming right-angled corners, scattered across the roof.

"The architect designed these to deflect sound," he said. "But I bet you can think of another use for them."

I laughed and let him push me against the nearest wall. I could feel the cold stone through my sweater.

Brian kissed me, hard, and then his hands were on my shoulders, gently turning me around. I wasn't surprised when I felt his lube-slick finger tracing my hole while his other hand pushed my jeans down to my thighs. When it came to sex, Brian Kinney was always prepared.

I could feel the music throbbing up from down below, and hear a faint sound of traffic from the street. Brian's hands were on my hips, and I pressed my palms flat against the wall, tipped my head back, and let his cock press slowly into my ass.

It was tight, and I tried to spread my legs a little more, but my jeans weren't down far enough. Brian moved his right hand from my hip, and I gasped as he closed it around my cock. I pushed harder against the wall, arching my back, feeling the tiny point of heat inside me get bigger every time he pushed into me, until it spilled out onto his hand.

I kept my hands braced on the wall, his fingers digging into my hips while he came. He pulled out of me carefully, and I couldn't stop myself from laughing a little.

He let his weight fall against me. "I'm not sure laughter is the response I was expecting."

"One thing about condoms," I said. "They're neater."

He kissed my hair, and yanked my jeans up. "Not a bad reason to go inside."

"Or home," I said.

"You know," he said as he steered me back toward the stairs, "If JT had laughed at poor Rage when he was at his most vulnerable..."

I patted him on the arm and pulled open the door. "Like you said: That's why they call it fiction."

**Brian's POV**

Justin was quiet all the way home. I didn't interrupt his reflection, just concentrated on the road, the hum of the engine, and the music throbbing out of the upgraded sound system I'd had installed in Justin's car as a Christmas gift.

When we pulled into the driveway, he glanced at me. "When is Emmett coming to take down the decorations?"

"Tomorrow," I said, pushing the remote for the garage door.

He nodded. "I used to hate seeing my mom take ours down."

I eased the car into the garage, next to my Corvette. "Do you want me to ask him to leave them up until you're on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean?"

He shook his head, and gave me a smile. "No. I guess..."

I got out, and looked at him over the hood of the car. "You just want to preserve this moment of holiday togetherness as long as possible."

He laughed. "I'm just finding it hard to get motivated to go back."

I pushed open the door to the kitchen. "Then don't."

He ignored me. And of course, he'd go back. But I knew what he meant. He'd been home more than a week. We'd gotten past the reunion sex and the holidays and back into the routine of living together. And although no one but Michael and, once, Theodore, ever said anything about it to me, I was going to miss him like a motherfucker.

Since, given the time of year, I assumed I didn't have any urgent business email, and if Gus had broken any bones or caused property damage in excess of the lesbians' annual incomes they'd have called, I didn't turn on my computer. I dragged Justin out to the glassed-in patio, stripped off his clothes, and pulled him into the spa.

He sighed as he sank into the hot water down to his jawline, his head tipped back on the edge. "Remind me to never, ever leave this house again."

I laughed and splashed him. "I somehow think that, after a few years, even my dick wouldn't be enough artistic inspiration for you to achieve your full potential as an artist."

He slid over until he was sitting next to me, and closed his hand around my half-hard cock. "True," he said, "but I'd _definitely_ become the best homosexual I could possibly be."

"You already are," I said, and kissed him.

We slept late in the morning, and when I got out of the shower, he'd vanished into his studio. He was leaving the next day, so I'd told them not to expect me at the office except for a quick stop to look over some Remson storyboards we needed for a presentation at the end of the week. I got coffee and went into the studio, deliberately not thinking about how many times I'd gone in there when he wasn't around.

He was sitting at his table, staring at a page in his sketchbook. He smiled and took the coffee from me. "I want to come into the office with you."

I raised a brow. "Whatever for?"

He stood up. "I want to see the Babylon ads on your fancy new projection system."

It was one thing Vangard had that Kinnetik hadn't, until we'd expanded: a screening room. If Justin wanted to see my latest toy, I was happy to demonstrate.

The storyboards were not bad. I suggested a few changes just to maintain my image as a monster, which I found useful for keeping the sensitive artist types Cynthia insisted on hiring out of my office. Then I took Justin into the annex.

He'd seen the ads before, of course, but on his laptop. He'd even made some not-useless suggestions for making them better. Too bad he'd be wasted as a commercial artist.

I connected my laptop to the projection system and loaded one of the images, of two men dancing, both their faces hidden against each other's necks. I pushed another button, and a line of copy appeared. It was the Babylon logo, followed by the words, "It's the first place I danced with another guy."

I clicked again, and a different ad appeared, this one two men kissing, a crescent of light and skin in a field of black. "Babylon," it read, "It's where I fell in love for the first time."

I ran through a dozen more, about break-ups and pick-ups, friendships and even loss: "It's where I heard the word 'AIDS' for the first time."

I pushed the button one last time. "And then there's this one, for the porn sites." The image of two naked men kissing, one white, one black, a spotlight shining across their bodies, their hands gripped together, flashed on the screen. "Babylon… the first place I sucked cock."

Justin sat back. "Jesus." He glanced sideways at me as the final ad faded off the screen.

"This is art." His voice didn't leave any room for discussion. "And it's also the best work you've ever done."

I raised one eyebrow. "Don't tell that to my paying clients."

He laughed. "I promise." Then he shifted to face me. "It's a little like the Pittsburgh campaign, isn't it?" I must have looked confused, because he said, "I mean, the whole reverse-reverse psychology thing. It's diabolical."

Once I thought about it, I realized he wasn't wrong. The first round of creative Kinnetik had done for the Pittsburgh Convention and Visitors Bureau had been slick and successful, aimed mostly at promoting business and convention travel, print ads running primarily in airline and business magazines, and on the web.

And then I pitched a new campaign, with ten times the budget and a hundred times the risk, watching their faces while I sold them on not fighting Pittsburgh's bad reputation, but embracing it. I shudder to think of it, but I believe the phrase "where the burning rivers once met" may have escaped my lips, for which I would either win another Ajax Award or go to hell, depending on whether you're in advertising or religion.

Either way, they'd gone for it, not without a certain amount of buyer's remorse afterward. But Justin was right; I'd done the same thing in both campaigns, grabbed onto the concept that defined the product in most people's minds – industrial wasteland, familiar old gay stomping ground – wrapped it in a package part emotion and part beauty, and made them buy the exact thing they thought they didn't want.

Justin was looking at me expectantly, but all I said was, "Too bad they don't give awards for 'Best Use of the Word "Cocksucking" in a Nightclub Ad.'"

He let the moment go, and grinned at me, the raunchy grin that meant only one thing. "Speaking of cocksucking," he said, unfastening my jeans and sliding to his knees in one smooth motion.

I put my head back. "Too bad they don't give awards for this, either."

**Justin's POV**

When I got back to London, it was like every student of the Institute of History, along with all the professors and most of the resident artists, were stricken with a crippling depression when classes resumed in January. It wasn't surprising; it was dark by 4 in the afternoon, and the weather refused to either snow or rain, instead dumping a freezing combination of both on us all month long.

Jense and Mark were fighting nearly every time I saw them, and I almost never saw either Caro or Shen.

And Kalli had stopped returning my emails and texts.

So if I'd been even more miserable than when I left for Pittsburgh, no one would have been surprised. Including me.

But even though I still hadn't figured out what the hell I was doing with my work, I didn't care. I woke up every day with ideas in my head again, about how to blast through whatever fucking obstruction was in my way. I even felt inspired by the work I could do without first having to re-configure the motor pathways of my brain.

I was on the phone with Brian late one night while I was working in the studio, and he, of course, tried to take the credit. "It was the amazing healing power of my semen."

I used the rag in my left hand to dab at a section of the painting on my worktable. "Actually, I have another theory."

I could hear his eyebrow raise over the phone. "Oh?"

I nodded. "I think it was the healing power of your ass."

Silence, then: "The annual Christmas Eve fuck is what turned you around?"

"I think so. Anyway, I told Michael that..."

He made a sound, but I ignored it. "... I thought it would be a great new super power for Rage. How letting JT top him could..."

"And what," Brian asked, his voice dry, "did Mikey think of _that_ little plot twist?"

I laughed. "Do you honestly think Michael would believe I'd be in a monogamous relationship with a guy so uptight he never gave it up? I mean, even he and Ben.... "

This time I couldn't ignore the sound; he actually whimpered. "Please, can we discuss Mel and Lindsay's sex life or JR's progress at being toilet trained, _anything_ to get that image out of my head?"

I was cleaning up a few hours later when I heard a tap at my studio door, followed by Jense sticking her head in. "Still up for that trip to Stockholm?" she said.

I raised an eyebrow. "Sure. Are you? The last time I saw you, I was afraid you'd be in police custody for cutting Mark's balls off."

She just laughed. "It's the fucking weather. Winter puts me into a state of perpetual despair alternating with fits of rage."

I walked over to the sink and started rinsing my brushes. "Then I have two questions. One, why are we going to Stockholm instead of, say, Bermuda? And two, why would I want to go _anywhere_ with you this time of year?"

"Because," she said smugly. "Stockholm is where the art is. You'll love it."

We ended up going the next weekend. I hadn't stopped to think about the actual experience of being in Stockholm before we went. I'd looked it up; I knew it would be cold, that there were only a few hours of light that time of year, and that if I lived there, I'd probably develop osteoporosis and a crippling case of depression.

But when we walked out of our hotel late that first morning, everything was iced with light, and the water spread out in front of us, glinting silver-blue.

Maybe it only lasted for five hours a day, but I learned more about light in that weekend than I ever did at PIFA.

We met some friends of Jense's for coffee before heading to the galleries. I sipped my drink and let their voices turn into nothing but sound while I looked at the buildings across the alley, tinged blue at the base by the shadows, and sparkling with frost where the sunlight hit their roof lines.

"Justin?" It was Mark, standing next to me, laughing. "Wake up."

We went first to the gallery showing, where Jense's friend Elias was exhibiting. It was a fantastic space, harsh white on walls and ceiling, with front and back walls of windows divided into huge panes by metal bars. You walked in off a trendy urban street, but the back reminded me of my studio in London, with its view of starkly vertical leafless trees.

Elias' paintings were on the ground floor. I liked them, bizarre renditions of folk tales in an almost comic book style. But I liked what was on the second floor more.

The light downstairs was an illusion, mostly created by design. Upstairs, the ceiling was two-thirds glass skylights, the space dissected by rectangles of light and shadow, moving and changing with the passing of clouds and time.

The walls were bare, but set around the room were pieces of sculpture, iron and metal twisted into shapes and forms that almost felt like they told a story, even if I had no idea what it was.

I'd gone upstairs alone, and I was standing in front of one piece, a huge contortion of metalwork writhing around a crumbling stone pillar, when Jense came up. I hoped she wouldn't say anything, but she did.

"This is amazing."

I nodded, but didn't answer her.

They headed for another gallery, but I didn't go with them. I walked down to the water's edge, then back up a little alley with an old church at the end of it. I took my sketchpad out of my bag, but it was too cold to draw for long. I hesitated, then pulled out my camera.

It was too cold even for that, so after a little while, I stopped at a cafe for a sandwich, and let my hands thaw on a cup of hot coffee.

I wanted to talk about the sculptures I'd seen, but I wanted to talk about them with Kalli, and as far as I could tell, she wasn't missing me like I was missing her. I kind of understood it; even now, the frustration I felt when my hand wouldn't do what my head told it to sometimes felt like it poisoned everything else in my life. Maybe what was going on for her wasn't really the same, but I still thought I knew how she felt, and why it made it hard for her to talk to me.

But I missed her.

I spent the rest of the day on my own, and then endured the grilling by Jense when I turned up right before we were leaving to meet some friends of hers for dinner. "I was just walking," I said. "And I went to a few galleries."

She seemed honestly confused, but I pretended not to notice, and just smiled. "Let's go," I told her.

At dinner, one of her friends looked at me curiously. "Jense says you draw a comic book in the U.S.?"

I nodded, blowing across a spoonful of hot soup. "It's a gay underground comic about a superhero named Rage."

"Show him," Jense said. "I saw the new issue in your bag when you put your sketchpad away..."

I didn't really mind him seeing it, but I wasn't in the mood to talk about it. I pulled it out anyway, handed it to him, and went back to my soup.

When I glanced at him, he had a little wrinkle between his brows. "It's a sequel to the previous issue," I told him. "So it might not make a lot of sense."

His eyes met mine. "No, it makes sense." He took a sip of wine, then looked at me again. "This boy is you, the one who saves Rage on the roof of the building?"

"Well," I said, frowning. "It's not _me_. I just used myself as a loose model for him in the first issue..."

Jense laughed. "And his name is JT, which are Justin's initials, and Rage is the exact image of his boyfriend."

He was still frowning a little. "And they were going to make a film of this?"

"For ten minutes," I said. "It never went anywhere." I slurped some more soup."Too gay."

That comment led to a long tirade against American culture, which is exactly what I expected. Halfway through they started speaking some language other than English, and I finished my dinner.

Back at the hotel, they all went downstairs to the bar, but I went up to my room. I sat cross-legged on the bed and started transferring the images from my camera to my computer.

I'd never invested in really good camera equipment, mostly because I hadn't worked with manipulated images in a long time. But I'd brought the camera I had, and I was glad. One of the reasons I'd stopped using the computer was I couldn't figure out how to make it use light the way I wanted it to, but I'd had an idea, and I wanted to try it out.

I didn't know how long I'd been working, but at some point the absolute quiet broke my concentration. I looked at the clock; it was almost 4 in the morning. I stood up and stretched the stiffness out of my back. I remembered then why I liked working on the computer; my hand felt fine. Then I cleared everything off the bed and went to sleep.

I faked sufficient sociability the next day to satisfy Jense, which was easier because I loved the first show we went to. It was a multimedia installation, juxtapositions of images of ordinary things from odd perspectives and in different scales – an endlessly looping film showing a tiny building in a sea of roof-high, wind-ruffled grass and flowers, a huge boot taking up most of a canvas shared with two miniaturized children, playing with a ball.

I let the rest of them leave me there while they walked down to the water to see a sculpture exhibit I'd seen the day before. I met them for dinner, but went back to my room instead of going with them to a club.

I called Brian, and told him about the light in Stockholm and my favorite galleries, and how I was pretty sure Jense thought I had a social anxiety disorder or something.

"Did you ever wonder why I don't like to look at art with you?" Brian said. "That's why. You like to be by yourself while you absorb the rays of artistic vision, or whatever the fuck it is you creative types do in museums and galleries."

I raised an eyebrow while I launched my graphics program. "Huh. I thought it was because you liked shopping better."

He sighed. "As usual, my altruistic motives are misconstrued as selfishness."

"Sucks to be you," I agreed.

"Don't say 'suck,'" he warned. "Unless you called looking for phone sex."

I grinned. "Now that you mention it... where are you?"

"Sadly, at Kinnetik, waiting for storyboards that are already an hour late." His voice was a little rough.

I laughed. "Later."

"Later." And the line went dead.

I started to open a file, and hesitated. Instead, I wrote a short email to Kalli. I was pretty sure she'd ignore it like she had all the rest, but I did it anyway.

"The light in Stockholm is different than anywhere I've ever been," I wrote. "It's almost, but not quite, enough to drive me to photography."

That was all I said. I didn't even sign it.

**Brian's POV**

I disconnected the somewhat unsatisfying phone call with Justin, and buzzed Cynthia. "If those storyboards for the new Babylon newsprint ads aren't here in fifteen minutes," I threatened, "I'm going down to the art department and..."

She was standing in the doorway, storyboards in her arm. "They're here."

I frowned. "Don't tell me. They fear me too much to bring them directly to me."

She shrugged, and I followed her over to the conference table. "Here you go."

I flipped through them once rapidly, then a second time, slowly. When I glanced at her, she looked smug.

"Well?"

"They're all right," I said. "Did we hire a new art director?"

She rolled her eyes and scooped them up. "I'll tell them you loved them. They're beautiful, you know. Too bad they're not for a paying client."

I nodded sadly. "I know. Just consider it a little pro bono work to keep Pittsburgh's club scene gay."

"My second favorite cause," she said as she headed for the door. "Right after the Red Cross."

"Get those to Pittsburgh Out tonight," I called after her. "The deadline's at 7."

She waved vaguely behind her, and I sat down at my desk to check my email. Nothing important, just the usual panicky message from Brent at the Convention Bureau, worried that the campaign was too edgy. I forwarded it to Cynthia; I'd given her a raise specifically to do whatever it was she did to calm the nerves of clients having a meltdown, a skill set she'd no doubt honed dealing with me for the last 8 years.

She was only partially successful; we had to spend an hour the next day meeting with what passed for leaders of Pittsburgh's business community, reassuring them that the campaign was going to put Pittsburgh back on the map and not blow up in their faces, subtly reinforced by a reminder that they were still on the hook for the campaign's entire cost if they pulled the plug at the last minute.

When we were done, it was only 6, too early to go home or to go out, so I stopped to eat. The diner lights were shining on the snow outside its windows, which would have been highly picturesque if not for the discarded cigarette butts and crushed coffee cups littering the area around the bench.

I went in anyway.

"And here he is, the man of the hour!" Debbie planted a huge, sloppy, lipstick-stained kiss on my cheek, which I intended to wipe off as soon as she let go of me.

I finally pushed away enough to get air to my lungs. "I'm going to have to lay off the Ambien, since I clearly gave you a hot stock tip while I thought I was sleeping," I told her, trying to get my arms free to so I could deal with the neon orange smear I was sure was adorning my left cheek.

She let me go, and smacked the right cheek. "If that's the kind of ad campaign you can come up with in your sleep, I'd ask for a double prescription next time." She shoved something in my face that, upon examination, was Pittsburgh Out, open to the double-page spread in the center of the issue featuring one of the new Babylon ads.

"Genius, that's what these are," she said. "And the HIV one... I could kiss you..."

I flinched away. "How about taking my order instead?" I said, sliding onto a stool at the counter.

She whipped out her order pad and pencil. "Whatever you want, sweetie. It's on the house."

I sat down and started flipping through the paper. The ads still lost a lot in newsprint, but whatever the latest art director, whose name I didn't bother remembering as I'd probably fire him soon, had done to them had at least made them passable for the medium.

"Those are great." It was Michael, sliding into the other side of the booth. "I saw the billboard on my way from the shop."

I hadn't seen it yet, but I just shrugged. "Another day, another ad campaign."

"It's not a fucking ad campaign," Debbie said, plopping a plate in front of me. "It's a fucking work of art."

"She's right, you know," Michael said as she stalked off. "Best work you've ever..."

I cut him off. "I know. And like I keep telling everyone near and dear to me: Don't let any of my paying clients hear you say that."

He laughed. "Deal." He paused. "I have news, too."

I lifted a brow and ate a fry.

"The first printing of Rage sold out already."

I stopped chewing. "Mikey, it's only been out for, what, ten days?"

"A week." He was practically bouncing in his seat. "We sold most of the run in Internet orders. I have three left in the shop."

"Does Justin know?"

He nodded. "I called him as soon as the publisher called me. They're doing another run."

"Well," I said, "the power of the cliffhanger, obviously. I guess people wanted to see Rage get his mojo back."

"I think they liked seeing Zephyr and JT come into their own as super-heroes who were able to save Rage from plummeting from the roof of..."

"I'm positive," I said, "that you're wrong about that."

Debbie was back, this time bearing Mikey's dinner. "Scoot over," she said, and slid in next to him. "So, Brian, what's next?"

I looked at her over the edge of my coffee cup. "Well, now that I've saved Gayopolis, I'm saving Pittsburgh." I frowned. "Assuming the idiots who run the Convention Bureau don't cancel the whole thing before the Super Bowl."

"It's going to be on the fucking _Super Bowl_?" She was impressed. "An ad for Pittsburgh, and the Ironmen playing. I know you're good, but that's some goddamn good luck." She looked at Michael. "Have you seen it?"

He shook his head. "Brian says it's in a vault or something."

"Just about." I'd insisted on it in the contract; non-disclosure agreements with the focus groups, and if it leaked, the Convention Bureau owed us a penalty. The contract was silent as to what would happen if the leak originated with someone on my team, but I'd already told Ted and Cynthia that lethal injection would be involved.

The bell for someone's order rang, and Debbie got up to get it. Michael watched her go, then looked at me. "Justin asked me how you are."

"I talk to him every day," I said.

"I think he has this weird idea that if something was wrong, you'd try to hide it from him."

"Where the fuck would he get an idea like that?" I stood up and dropped a twenty on the table before leaning down and kissing his forehead. "Night, Mikey."

Cynthia more than earned her raise in the next few weeks. The clients had seen all the new ads – television, web, outdoor, and print. They'd also spent an entire day reviewing the campaign's social and online integration components, and sat in on four different focus groups specifically looking at the Super Bowl spot. If they couldn't tell the whole thing was fucking brilliant, they were idiots. And Debbie was right; having the Ironmen playing just made the whole thing feel like destiny.

Emmett, who was apparently now a football expert by virtue of having fucked Drew Boyd, hosted a Super Bowl party at Deb's. I didn't go; I was in the office, hunkered down with the online monitoring team, waiting for the ad to run so we could watch the needle move on viewer response.

I'd taken a chance and placed it in the final quarter. If the game was close, the gamble would pay off, especially since the placement knocked half a million bucks off the ad rate. If the game was over before it began, total viewership would be down, but still the most eyeballs of any other TV slot.

The Atlanta Hawks had dominated in the first quarter, until the Ironmen remembered how they'd gotten to the fucking game in the first place, and tied things up in the second. They'd swapped leads right up until the last few minutes of the third quarter, when they'd tied.

And that's where things were when the ad ran.

Anyone in advertising who tells you they always know how a campaign will do is either lying or an idiot. No matter how much you focus-group an ad, no matter how loudly your instincts are telling you it's a winner, the ultimate test is how the largest possible segment of consumers reacts.

I was right a lot more often than I was wrong. I was right more often than most of my competitors were right, too. But this could have still been the biggest waste of money in the history of Pittsburgh.

It wasn't.

I'd known when I first pitched the campaign that it wouldn't work if it didn't hit people in that spot where they cried and cheered and wanted to go out and cure cancer, but it never really had that effect on me. All I ever saw were its pieces: Images, film, script, voice talent, editing.

But watching it live with the rest of the office was different. I saw the black and white archival footage of steelyards, hand-colored red sparks scattering across the screen, cut with more modern scenes of desolation, buildings crumbling, and yes, the rivers burning. And despite every dark thought I'd ever had about the city of my birth, for the first time I felt my breath catch when the city began to rise out of its polluted, poverty-stricken past and build itself up again.

Hell, we even had footage of the Ironmen winning the playoffs.

Fifteen minutes after the ad ran, the Ironmen had also won the Super Bowl. And the "Like Steel" campaign to change the way America saw Pittsburgh was the most-watched, most YouTubed, most blogged, and most critically acclaimed spot in the whole fucking game.

There was an orgy of hugging and yelling going on; even Brent was hanging on to Cynthia and Ted and repeating, "I knew it! I just knew it!" over and over again. I quietly walked into my office and sat on the sofa. I dropped my cell phone on the table, and watched text after text ping in, interspersed with notifications of missed calls and voice mails.

My private office line rang, and I picked it up. "Couldn't get through on the cell?"

Justin laughed. "Nope, couldn't cut through the hordes of people wanting to be the first to tell you that you're a genius."

"It's true," I told him. "I am."

"Your clients must be happy."

I heard a cheer erupt in the next room. "It appears that they are."

"Tell me there was a performance bonus in the contract."

I smiled. "There was." A large one, actually.

"Still hate Pittsburgh?"

I lowered my voice. "Less today than ever before in my life. And let's just hope America feels the same."

**Justin's POV**

I let Brian and Pittsburgh go back to their celebrations. I was in my studio in a land without a Super Bowl, staring at the sketch of the wall at Kinnetik, trying to think of a way to translate it to canvas so it would match what I saw in my head. It wasn't bothering me like it used to; it felt like trying to solve a puzzle, the solution a conversation buzzing just outside my ability to hear it. I kept thinking all I had to do was listen a little harder.

The door opened, and Shen came in.

"Hey," I said.

"Hi." He walked over to the table, and looked down at the sketch in front of me. "Are you going to paint this?"

I shrugged. "I'm not sure."

He didn't say anything, just sat down and looked at it for a little longer. Then he turned around and looked at the canvas on my easel, which was not one of my successes.

I caught his eye, and shrugged. "Not my best day," I said.

He nodded, then picked up something else that was lying half-covered by my sketch pad: the most recent issue of Rage.

I got up and started cleaning while he flipped through its pages.

"You draw this graphic novel?" he asked.

I nodded, even though he wasn't looking at me. "It's okay to say comic book."

"Comic book. And work like this is not a problem with your hand?" He was pointing at an intricately-shaded street scene.

"Sometimes." I walked back over to the table. "Only if my hand gets tired. If I do too much, or try to do work that's too detailed. Then my hand won't do what my head tells it to."

I could tell he was searching for words. "Technique…" He stopped, then started again. "Is it important, the technique you use to create it? I mean, does it matter for itself?"

I shook my head. "No, but..."

Shen looked back down at my sketch of the wall, then back at me. "I am interviewed, and the question is always, how? How do you create this glaze, this effect, this…" He stopped again.

"The process. They ask about the process."

He nodded. "Yes. One of the questions those who are not artists always want to ask." He gestured at the easel behind us. "The process you use to create art is not art."

"No," I said, slowly. "But the process can make it worse, less true."

Shen shook his head. "The same with language. But finding a way to keep that from happening, to keep the process from making it worse, that is our job." Shen smiled at me then, his eyes crinkling in a way I'd never seen, something like light or even joy on his face. "That is what we do."

I stared at him and heard Brian's voice against my ear, that fierce whisper: "You'll find a way. It's what you do." I hadn't believed him when he said it.

"There you are." Caro had stuck her head in my door. "Are you ready?"

Shen turned to her, and nodded. "I lost track of the time."

She smiled at him. "It's okay." She glanced at me. "Justin, did you want to come?"

I didn't answer right away, and she repeated my name. "Justin?"

I noticed Shen smiling again, but it was his old, almost invisible smile. I shook my head. "No. I have something I have to figure out. But have a good time." And I went back to my easel.

It would have been nice if the paint and brushes, the canvas and palette, my brain and hand, had all heard what Shen said, and joined together to become the painting that was trying to explode out of my head.

But of course, nothing like that happened. I ended up junking that canvas like its four predecessors, and went to bed.

Brian called one night a couple of weeks later, while I was heating up some take-out on the tiny stove top in my flat. He'd wanted to come to London for my birthday, but he couldn't get away.

"All my old clients are demanding we re-vamp their campaigns, and Cynthia and Theodore are trying to figure out how many new clients we can take on without starting to do shitty work," he said. "Being a genius is exhausting, Sunshine."

I grinned. "I know."

He paused just a second too long. "Any artistic breakthroughs?"

"None," I said cheerfully. "But I'm still doing good work. And I guess..." I took a breath... "I know I'll figure it out. At some point."

"You should probably work on your delivery before you say that again," he said.

"Hey," I objected. "Baby steps."

"Baby steps are for non-geniuses," he informed me. "Geniuses like us walk in the steps of giants."

I shook my head. "God, you've become an even bigger egomaniac. I wouldn't have thought that could happen."

"I'm sure some crushing defeat will come along and teach me the error of my ways," he said. "Until then, I plan on making everyone who ever fucked with me regret they were born." He sounded smug. "Gardner Vance is still crying himself to sleep every night, I have no doubt."

"Richard Bohling?" I said hopefully. Michael and I had never forgiven him for his Rage-ian series of ads for his club.

"Huh," Brian said. "I'd actually forgotten his existence. Yes, I'm pretty sure he's not feeling great about losing Kinnetik as his agency right now."

"Good," I said. "I hope he goes bankrupt."

"Not likely, with all his old money millions. In fact, if Pittsburgh's renaissance is as successful as I told the Convention Bureau it would be, his family business will probably make more money off it than I will."

"That's a depressing thought." I'd finished eating, and put my plate in the sink. "Are you at the office?"

"No. I'm at the loft."

I almost made a joke about how we were talking about Kinnetik when we could have been having phone sex, but right at that instant I wanted to be naked in bed with Brian so much, I couldn't even talk.

"Justin?"

"Sorry," I said, clearing my throat. "Have you ever been so horny you couldn't even jerk off?"

"Yes," he said, his voice dry. "Six times today already."

"Yeah, me too." I decided to change the subject. "So, I have to give this presentation tomorrow on the history of political protest in art."

"Culminating, I assume, in the destruction and fall of a corrupt mayoral candidate in one of America's largest post-industrial cities, now poised on the brink of re-birth thanks to the unbelievable...."

"...ego of my partner? No, I thought I'd skip that chapter and concentrate on Guernica and the agit-prop movement."

"Well, if you want to be predictable..."

"I want to get it over with." I didn't really object to the occasional presentations that were a part of the residency, but I was glad this was the last one. I'd learned I preferred to create art rather than talk about it.

After we got off the phone, I went back over to the studio. My flat was too small and dark to do anything more than sleep or eat. I checked my slides for the presentation, made a few notes, and shut my laptop.

I hesitated. I hadn't done any painting that day while I put my slides together, but I knew if I started now, it would be halfway to morning before I stopped. I walked over to the sink and picked up a tube of paint and my palette, still thinking.

I put a thick line of gray paint on the palette, and then added a little black, then some cyan, then a little more black. I picked up my knife and started hashing into the paint, then smearing it together, the way I'd learned in art school.

I looked at the canvas on my easel, and frowned. I had barely started it, but I could see now that it was going where too many of my abstracts went lately; exactly where they always went.

I put the palette and blade down, picked up the canvas, and carried it over to my work table, where I laid it flat. I'd barely done more than prep it and rough in a shape in the lower left hand corner; I took a thick scoop of paint off my palette and started obscuring what I'd already done.

The color was right, but the texture was wrong. I couldn't count the times I'd said that to myself: Fix the texture. And I did what I always did, reach for more paint.

This time, I stopped. I put down my brush, and picked up the blade again, and stood with it in my hand, not thinking. Not planning. Just feeling its weight, and staring into the swirling storm-colored canvas on my table.

I brought the edge of the blade down on the upper edge of the painting, and jerked it hard to the right.

A pale gray line ripped through the black, hard-edged and fine like a laser line. I lifted my hand and crossed back over what I'd scraped before, and a second line appeared, this time with a little of the brownish tone that had been on the canvas before that night.

I looked at the blade in my hand. I was holding the thick handle with my fist, not with my fingers, the way I held a brush. I tightened my grip, then relaxed it, and tried not to think about my brain, and scar tissue, and all the botched canvases facing the wall behind me.

And I scraped a third line across the first two.

I don't really know how long I did it. I had one large canvas, but I didn't want to fuck it up until I knew what the fuck I was doing. So I kept layering paint over paint, slicing through it with the flat of the blade, then the corners, then the pointed end of my brush. That made too thick a line, though, and it didn't have the sharp edges that I wanted.

I was covered in paint. My hands were a mess. The canvas was, too. But I suddenly realized I was so relaxed and so exhausted I could have fallen asleep right there on my work table.

I made myself clean up and then, when I got back to my flat, made myself shower. Then I fell into bed, still seeing threads of light dissecting the blackness inside my eyelids before I fell asleep.

**Brian's POV**

I didn't even look up. "No."

Ted tried again. "Brian, this is a classic case of opportunity striking. How many shots at the brass ring does one man, one company, get? How many firms would kill to be where Kinnetik is right now? How many..."

"….roads must a man walk down before he kills his accountant and drowns him in the place where the burning rivers meet?" I stood up. "Theodore, it's still no. And the last time I checked, I was still in charge. Which means the discussion is over."

Ted had been pushing me to borrow money and expand Kinnetik, but there were two things I knew for sure: Kinnetik was and would always be a boutique firm, and the day I borrowed money to expand the business was the day I stopped being my own boss.

Cynthia agreed with me, but she always managed to have an urgent crisis in the art department whenever Theodore launched into another sales pitch. I was considering revoking her raise, especially since the Convention Bureau was now convinced the whole campaign had been their idea from the beginning, and the annoying flood of emails about "alienating the business community" and "over-shooting our target" had dried up the day after the Super Bowl.

They didn't even complain about the performance bonus. 

I glanced up; Ted was still standing there. "Yes?"

"I was just wondering when you were going to London again."

I sighed. "Because you think being once again in the arms of my partner will put a pink rosy glow over my brain and I'll change my mind?"

"No, he said, pausing at the door. "Because you really, really need to get laid." Then he left.

"Truer words," I told the space where he'd been standing a second before, "have never been spoken."

I'd flown to London the first week of March, and Justin and I spent the entire weekend in bed. I don't think we said much to each other beyond, "Do that. There. Harder," but I was aware that he'd had some kind of epiphany with his painting. In fact, I'm almost sure he'd intended to bring me out to his studio, but we were still fucking when the driver texted me from out front, and I nearly missed my flight home.

"Yeah," he said when I called him the next morning, "I thought of it once, but just when I was about to suggest we go out to the studio, you started licking my asshole, and the next time I thought about it, you were already back in Pittsburgh."

"It's good to see our priorities haven't been corrupted by marriage and success," I told him. Then I made my voice businesslike. "The important thing is, you're doing good work. Nothing else matters."

"Right," he said, amused. "Until the next time my ass and your cock are in the same room."

I conceded his point.

Michael lured me to his house for dinner one night, and when I arrived with pot and a bottle of Jack Daniels, I discovered we weren't alone. Ben, Hunter, JR, Gus, and the lesbians were there. 

"Daddy!" Gus said, and started babbling about a classroom project involving some species of lizard and a fish tank that I assured him was far more fascinating and scientifically significant than anything I did when I was his age. 

"Et tu, Mikey?" I hissed at Michael when I went into the kitchen to put the JD on the counter. "I thought this was a little Brian and Michael bonding time, but no. It's a fucking family reunion."

"Problem, guys?" It was Ben, standing in the doorway, looking both amused and concerned.

"Not at all, Professor," I said. "Just a little crisis at the club, I'm going to have to..."

"Leave right after dinner," Michael said firmly and duplicitously. 

I glared at him. "Right. Sorry, can't be helped."

Michael put a glass of red wine in my hand. I sipped it tentatively, but it was a cut above his usual dago red. Melanie must have brought it; for all her faults, and they were legion, she had good taste in booze.

Lindsay flashed me a bright smile when I sat down at the table. "So, when does the roof open at Babylon?" she asked.

"April 10." I lifted my glass in her direction. "I assume you'll be there?"

"As long as we can get a sitter," Melanie said. "Considering that anyone we'd ask will probably be there."

I opened my mouth, then shut it. Babysitters and big nights at Babylon; just what we all wanted to remember. 

"What?" Hunter said into the silence.

JR stuck her fork into the air, a spoonful of Ben's tofu glop flying off it and landing in Michael's hair. "Hah!" she said triumphantly. " _Hah_!"

"That's right, sweetie," Lindsay said, her voice a little strained. "Hah."

I didn't end up leaving after dinner. Gus fell asleep with his head in my lap, and at 9 I carried him out to their car. "Don't be such a stranger," Lindsay said. "I know you're the most famous and successful ad executive in America now, but Gus needs a father figure to talk to him about lizards and snakes."

I gave her a pained look. "All I know about lizards and snakes is they can be made into designer shoes. I'm pretty sure that shit is Mel's department."

"Screw that," Melanie said, leaning down to slide JR into her car seat. "Besides, Hunter seems to have an affinity for snakes and snails and puppy dog tails, so he's going to handle all of this."

Gus opened his eyes. "Are we getting a puppy?" he asked sleepily.

"When hell freezes over," Lindsay said in a sweet voice. "Go back to sleep, you're dreaming."

After they left,I went back in the house and got Michael shit-faced. 

I was too drunk to drive, so I called a cab to take me to the loft. But at the last minute, I had him take me to Babylon instead. I walked in the door, past a fairly short line waiting to get in, and then climbed up to the catwalk and stood, looking down.

The club wasn't as full as it would have been before Bohling had opened up down the street, but it wasn't as sparse a crowd as it would have been a month before, either. I didn't design the ads specifically to drive business back to the club; they were just the first step in a PR campaign that would culminate with the opening of the roof and what I was counting on would be the combined effect of a shiny new place to dance and drink and the realization that half the people in Bohling's club were straight and from the suburbs rather than homos from the city of steel. 

"Howdy, stranger." It was Emmett, flushed and glittered. "Surveying your kingdom?"

I didn't look at him. "Just wondering what it would cost to hire a couple hundred suburban twenty-somethings to put on spandex and go to 345 every weekend until we open the roof."

"Would you really..."

I laughed, and finally turned my face in his direction. "Why not?"

He answered slowly, a slightly perplexed expression on his face. "Because it's not fair?"

I raised one eyebrow.

"Right," he said. "What was I thinking? It's a _fabulous_ idea."

"Well," I said, turning back to look at the crowd below. "The trick will be convincing Theodore."

I didn't end up doing it. First of all, I had no idea where one purchased heterosexual suburbanites. I mean, if you want hot fags, you can pretty much order them by the dozen from central casting. Breeders? I had no idea.

Second, making sure the roof was done in time for the opening while managing the controlled explosion happening at Kinnetik was not one, not two, but at least six full time jobs.

Besides, Bohling's club seemed to be drawing the Pittsburgh equivalent of the bridge and tunnel crowd even without my divine intervention.

Justin flew in on the eighth, and I had to have a driver pick him up because I couldn't get out of the club. We spent the night at the loft, and then I was back at the club in the morning.

Justin showed up a half hour later, two big Starbucks cups in his hand, and one of my old workout sweatshirts on. "I hope it's not this cold tomorrow night," he said, holding out a cup.

I gratefully took it. "It's supposed to warm up tomorrow. We'll be fine." I glanced at the far end of the rooftop garden area, where the contractor was yelling at a guy from the nursery about drip lines and drainage. "Although it would be the first time the weather worked in our favor since this whole fucking project began."

Justin wandered off to look at the glassed-in dance floor, and I went over to supervise the installation of the lighting as far from the contractor as possible. It was Ted's job to listen to him yell, not mine.

A little while later, there was one of those lulls that hit when the construction crew's first round of Red Bull wears off. I went looking for Justin, and found him sitting cross-legged on the roof facing one of the half-renovated buildings next door, sketching.

I stopped. His tongue was caught between his teeth, and his pencil was moving furiously. I could tell his hand was going to cramp up soon; he was trying to out-run it. 

I was signing checks in the office when he came in the door. I stood up, and he walked right into my arms. 

"Fuck, Justin." I held him a little away from me. "You're freezing. What were you doing up there?"

He laughed and nuzzled into me despite my best effort to hold him at arm's length. "I wanted to sketch the building next door. It's never going to look like that again."

"Well," I said, giving up the fight to maintain a small zone of warm air around my body, "unless Pittsburgh is hit by a meteor."

"Of course," Justin said. "That goes without saying."

I held his upper arms. "Let's go home and get you warmed up." 

He dropped his hands to the button on my jeans. "This office seems nice and warm to me. How about you just lock the door?"

The inside of his mouth wasn't cold at all.

He had dinner with his mother while I was still at the club that night. I wasn't sure if my being there actually got anything done faster, but there was no way I could have left. He texted me at around 10 that he was going to bed; he was still on UK time. 

I got back to the loft at 3. He was wrapped up in the duvet, and he'd left the light on over the bed. I felt something in my stomach un-knot while I looked at him, and even though I'd meant to shower, I just stripped off my clothes and got under the covers instead.

He didn't quite wake up, just untangled himself from the duvet enough to let me in. 

When I woke up the next day, he was sitting at the kitchen counter, working on his laptop. "Hey," he said when I groggily stumbled over to the coffee pot. "What time do you need to be back there?"

I stirred sugar into my coffee, and considered his question while drinking it. "As soon as I shower." I drained my cup. "And have a few more of these."

When we got to the club, Alfe was in the rooftop DJ booth, headphones on, dancing to the music only he could hear. Daphne was sitting on the edge of the counter next to his control panel, furiously thumb-typing on her phone.

She jumped down when she saw Justin, and ran over to him. "I was just texting you!"

He shook his head. "I didn't get..."

"Oh, shit," she said. "I forgot ... I was texting the London number."

They scurried off to do whatever they did – presumably giggle and get high, if past history was any indicator – and I nodded to Alfe, who pushed his headphones off. "We're all set for tonight," he said. "I checked the system already. Sounds great."

"Well, considering I could have purchased a small tropical island with what it cost me, it had fucking better sound great."

I walked around with a critical eye. Almost everyone from the construction crew was gone, except a couple of electricians and two guys hanging a door on the utility room. Emmett and his crew weren't there yet, but when they arrived, the catering kitchen behind the bar was ready for them.

I headed for the far side of the maze to check out the lighting we'd installed for the opening, but veered in the opposite direction when I saw Ted talking with the contractor. I rounded a corner, and there was Justin.

"Where's Daphne?" I asked him.

"She had to go buy new shoes for tonight," he said. 

"Of course she did." I couldn't remember the last time I bought new shoes. Running two businesses was fucking with my recreational shopping time.

"Baby!" Emmett had just arrived, and spotted Justin. He came racing over, threw his arms around him, and kissed his cheek. "Our world traveler! When did you get home?"

I let Justin catch Emmett up on his adventures, and went to find someone to yell at. It wasn't easy; however much I hated to admit it, everything was right on schedule.

 

Ted had been shocked when I told him I wasn't packing the house for the opening. 

"They'll be there," I'd said. "They wouldn't miss it."

And they were. The line, 100 percent genuine, stretched for blocks before we even opened. We had positioned spotlights on the jagged unfinished construction of the next-door buildings, which gave the whole thing a post-apocalyptic feel from the street below. People were flooding toward Babylon to see what was doing on.

Upstairs, the apocalypse couldn't have been further off. We were at our legal occupancy limit within 30 minutes of opening the doors, and only let people in when someone else went out for the rest of the night. The food was gone by 11 pm, and Ted was practically orgasming as he ran the bar totals for all three floors. 

I saw Justin on the edge of the dance floor, and I walked around the edge until I was behind him. I slid my arms around him, and he tipped back his head and smiled, then turned around. I kissed him.

"Having a good time?" he said. 

"Mmmm hmmm," I answered, my mouth still on his. I slid my hands down to his hips, and pulled him against me. We danced a little, or maybe it wasn't dancing; I wasn't paying any attention to the music blasting over Alfe's new sound system.

My cock was hard against Justin's hip, and his was just as hard on my thigh. His fingers were resting on my shoulder and the back of my neck, tracing lines of electricity on my skin.

I licked his ear. "I want to fuck you." My voice sounded thick.

He pulled away a little and looked at me. His eyes were glassy, but he smiled. "Right here?"

I nodded. "Right here. In front of everybody."

"Sure. But you'll have to wear a condom, or they'll throw us out of the club."

I felt my mouth twist into a frown. "Who the fuck created a stupid policy like that?"

He nuzzled back into me, and licked my throat. "I heard it was the owner."

I kissed him, then slid my hands down his back and inside his jeans, jamming my thigh between his legs. He made a sharp sound, like a gasp, and I sucked his tongue inside my mouth. 

I became vaguely aware that someone was repeating my name, and, tragically, it wasn't Justin begging me to fuck him.

"Theodore."

"Sorry to interrupt this intimate moment, but..."

I shook my head. "Actually, we were just discussing one of the club's policies."

Justin laughed, half-turned toward Ted, his hands still resting on my shoulders.

"Well, you'd better come downstairs. The cops say the line to get in is now five blocks long, and they're going to charge you for traffic control at the intersections if you don't do something about it."

"What would they have me do?" I still didn't let go of Justin. "Let everyone in? Then I'd have the fire department all over the club." I paused. "Hmmm, sexy firefighters' night. Do you think..."

Ted cut me off. "What I think is you'd better come downstairs and talk to them. You're the owner. They're asking for you." 

I rubbed the headache that was knotting itself into existence between my eyes and followed him toward the stairs, my arm around Justin's shoulders. "What happened to the days when you could just buy off the cops?"

Justin jabbed me with his elbow. "They ended when you got Stockwell indicted."

He was right. "I knew that was going to come back to bite me in the ass one day." 

He grinned at me, remarkably unsympathetically. "Come on, Rage. Gayopolis needs you."

I left Justin at the first floor bar with some of the fashionably garbed dilettantes who, by day, slaved in Kinnetik's art department. I'd always assumed they held Justin in a certain degree of awe – the boss' spouse, a brilliant artist, the intern who made the big time – but when I mentioned that to Justin one night when he was recovering from his near-death experience with meningitis, he'd laughed as hard as his still-painful head would let him.

"They resent me," he'd said. "They think I should somehow be able to make you treat them better."

I'd frowned. "What, by helping me understand their very special creative natures, and how they can't harness the muses in order to meet such mundane things as deadlines and client expectations despite the fact that they freely and knowingly accepted employment at an advertising agency?"

"Well," he'd said, "I don't think those would be their exact words, but yes."

I guess the fact that when they were drinking with Justin, they were drinking on the house, was responsible for the apparent happiness with which they welcomed him. I left them to it, and went outside to appease Pittsburgh's finest.

It turned out I had no need of Rage's superpowers, since the uniformed officer standing next to Theodore seemed to have fond memories of an afternoon spent exploring alternative uses for his handcuffs and nightstick back in my apparently not at all misspent past.

We worked out a compromise involving my own security team and two officers, a service provided courtesy of the taxpayers, reflective of Babylon's own sizable annual contribution to the city's coffers.

"A pleasure doing business with you," I said, shaking his hand. 

"Likewise," Ted told him, still looking a little confused over the whole thing. 

I looked at him appraisingly, then said, "You know, Officer..." I paused, then went on. "I wonder if you've taken a look at the situation at that new club over in the old ice house."

He looked startled, then started to laugh, then got his face back into cop-neutral. "Now that you mention it, Mr. Kinney, I did think the people standing in line looked awfully young."

I nodded sympathetically. "Hetero suburban teens with fake IDs," I said.

"Exactly." He gestured to his men. "I think we'll be heading over there now, make sure those kids aren't getting into any trouble."

"I knew I could count on the fine officers of the Pittsburgh PD," I told him.

As they headed for their squad cars, Ted shook his head. "I'm guessing there's a lot to that story I don't want to know."

I nodded to the bouncer as Ted and I went back up the stairs into the club. "I don't know, Theodore. Unless you've changed a lot now that you're gainfully employed and in a committed relationship, I think it's a story you'd definitely want to know." Then I smiled. "Although you never will."

He sighed. "Of course." We passed through the archway into the main part of the club, and he raised his voice so I could hear him. "You know the worst that will happen if they hassle Bohling about underage kids is he'll have to pay a fine."

I nodded. "Oh, I know. Shutting Bohling's club down wasn't the point."

"Well," he asked, reasonably enough. "Then what _is_ the point?"

I saw Justin near the bar, in deep drunken conversation with my art department, and moved away from Ted toward them. "I can't let you in on all my secrets, Theodore. You'll have to wait and see."

I dragged Justin back upstairs and took shameless advantage of his inebriated state to check out the view from the dark side of the roof, behind one of the walls that were becoming my favorite part of the expansion.  
 **  
Justin's POV**

They had to turn on all the lights and send security teams out onto the roof to get everyone out when the club finally closed that night. Brian and I were sitting with Ted and Emmett at a table on the edge of the dance floor, watching the clean-up crew scrape mountains of glitter into huge dustpans. 

"Even the janitorial tasks are glamorous at Babylon," Emmett sighed.

Brian snorted. "Once the lights come on, you have to be pretty drunk to still see any glamor in this place."

Ted held up a glass of club soda. "To Brian Kinney, advertising genius and gay club super-hero." He shook his head. "You really did it."

Brian let the neck of his beer bottle touch Ted's glass. "Wait until all the bills come in before you celebrate too hard, Theodore."

"When do you jet back across the seas?" Emmett asked me.

"Monday," I said. "I have an open studio on Tuesday, and a lot to finish before the show in June."

Brian laid his arm lightly across my shoulders. "And then it's back to glorious Pittsburgh, a metropolis even more glamorous than Babylon after closing time."

"Hear, hear," said Emmett, holding up an empty cocktail glass.

I grinned, and lifted my own empty glass. "Where the burning rivers meet."

Brian groaned. "Why didn't someone stop me from using that line?"

"It's genius," I told him. 

"It sounds like I lifted it straight out of a romance novel."

"No," Ted said. "A fantasy series about sentient cats."

"Can't be cats," Emmett said. "They don't like the water." He paused. "That must be why they set it on fire..."

Brian stood up. "That's about all I can take of the secret fantasy life of Emmett Honeycutt. Theodore, you can supervise the clean-up, and then feel free to take the day off tomorrow."

"Thanks," he said. "You do realize tomorrow is Sunday?"

"Great," Brian said, clapping him on the shoulder. "That means you won't have to miss church."

While we were waiting for the car out front, Brian put his arm around me. "Do you want to go out to the house? Last chance on this trip."

I shook my head. "I was getting ready to sleep on the office sofa. Jet lag, remember."

"I don't believe in jet lag," he told me as the car pulled up. "Jet lag is for the weak."

We rode up in the elevator, laughing and kissing. He barely broke away from my mouth to unlock the loft door, and he pushed me against it as soon as we closed it behind us.

I looked at him, and pushed back his hair. "Do you ever just feel like running away? Escaping?"

He answered with his mouth against mine. "Yes."

"Where do you want to go?" I asked, still laughing, still a little drunk.

He pulled his head back just a little, just enough so I could see his eyes. He looked at me that way for a minute, and then he said, "Inside you."

I didn't breathe. I remembered the first time I'd come here after I'd gone to New York, the way he'd fucked me. The way he'd looked at me.

I put my arms around his neck, and when he started kissing me, he almost pulled me up off my feet. 

"Come on," I said, pushing him toward the bedroom. "Fuck me...."

He walked me there, both of us pulling at each other's clothes. I lay down on the dark duvet, naked, and he knelt between my legs, his lubed fingers moving in and out of my ass. I gripped his wrist lightly, my thighs falling apart, my eyes closed.

When he pressed his cock inside me, I wrapped my arms and legs around him, pulling him as tight against me as I could. But it wasn't enough. He wasn't even thrusting, just pushing deeper while I held onto him, trying to let him get inside me the way he wanted to, the way I wanted him to.

I wasn't thinking about coming, but suddenly it was there, a tingle that unfurled into an explosion of heat. He felt my cock against his stomach, and gasped, then locked our mouths together. He still didn't pull out, just rocked inside me while I came.

He lay there for a second, and I could feel both our hearts pounding. He groaned, and then he was snapping his hips, moving in and out of me. I held myself open, felt him driving into my ass and then filling it up, hot and sweet and not stopping, while he gasped against my ear and said, "I love you, I love you, I love you."

When he finished, neither of us moved. I let my hand push his hair back again, and he gently slid out of me, and moved to the side so his weight was mostly on the mattress. And we fell asleep, just like that, tangled and wet.

I woke up the next morning to the sound of the shower and the smell of coffee. I lay there, still sore and happy from the night before, before I finally pushed myself up and into the bathroom. 

Brian smiled at me through the steam and I got in the shower, letting him wash my hair and rinse us both off, slowly.

"God, I miss American showers," I said, eyes closed while the shampoo ran down my face and chest.

He didn't say anything, just kissed me.

We didn't go anywhere that day, just ate take-out and fucked and slipped in and out of sleep at random times. When he drove me to the airport Monday morning, I'd had about three hours of sleep in the previous 24.

Brian's theories about jet lag aside, I gave silent thanks to the gods of coffee when my alarm clock went off my first morning back in London. I guess the students and faculty at the Institute had realized the art program would be over in a few weeks, because they'd been turning up in large numbers lately. 

Before I went to my studio, I stopped at Shen's. I was working on a huge canvas, so big I'd needed the maintenance crew to help me hang it. I wanted to borrow his ladder so I could reach the whole thing.

He didn't mind; he had finished the two largest of his glazed spheres, and already overseen their placement in the rear section of the building where the Reynaud Trust show would be held in June. 

His studio, which was three times the size of mine due to the scale of his project, looked empty with just the one six-foot sphere. He was almost done with it, but he was also designing the display space it would be exhibited in, which would take up the rest of his time in London.

He didn't say much when I came in, just nodded when I asked if I could take the ladder. "You can keep it," he said.

I looked at the surface he was wiping with a rag. I could never see the change in his pieces from one layer to the next, but every few days, it was as if the colors all deepened simultaneously, and started to glow from inside. I had a certain amount of sympathy for people who couldn't help asking him about his process.

Then again, I was kind of in love with process again, now that I'd started experimenting with sharp objects. I'd learned about the technique in art school, and like all students I'd used my palette knife and the pointed end of my brush from time to time.

But this was different. I'd tried all kinds of painting blades and sharper-edged tools, and had settled on a small group that gave me the control I wanted, as well as being able to produce a sharp, fine line that vibrated with tension on the canvas. I'd painted the first piece I was really happy with before I left for Pittsburgh. 

Jense came in at the end of my open studio. She looked at the one finished canvas where it leaned against the wall. "That's Stockholm," she said.

I nodded, then dumped my tools noisily in the sink.

"You have to show this one."

"I know." I washed and rinsed everything, and set it to dry. Sharp-edged tools were much easier to care for than brushes.

Jense was trying to decide what to exhibit. She'd done beautiful work throughout the whole residency, and I'd told Brian he should consider buying one of her pieces, a fragile wire sculpture that looked like it was in the process of turning into something else. It felt like Kinnetik to me.

"What about this one?" She was looking at one of my abstract paintings.

I walked over and looked at it. "I don't know. I'm not going to decide yet. I'm still working."

She just nodded, then asked if I wanted to go for a drink. 

The next morning I was checking email on my phone while drinking coffee. I stared at the words on the tiny screen, then dialed Brian, not stopping to think about the time difference.

"Did you see this?" I said when he picked up the phone.

Silence, then, "Justin? It's fucking 4 in the morning."

I ignored the question. "Do you have a Google alert on Kinnetik?"

He didn't answer right away. I wasn't sure if he was checking his mail or had fallen back to sleep. "Brian?"

"Hold on." I waited, and then he said, "What the fuck..."

"The Pittsburgh ad is on the shortlist for a _Clio_ ," I said. "It's like an Academy Award for advertis..."

"I know what a Clio is, Justin." I could almost see him running his hand through his hair. "What are they doing releasing this in the middle of the fucking night?"

"It's an international award," I started. "And it's already tomorrow here. Today. Daytime. I mean..."

"Okay, my happiness at making the shortlist is being substantially diminished by the realization that my significant other is suffering some sort of cognitive impairment caused, no doubt, by sex deprivation."

"Are you going to go?"

"I don't know. Probably." He'd gone into the bathroom; I could hear him peeing.

"Do you want me to fly over? It's in New York, right?"

He flushed. "We're not going to win, Justin."

"You don't know that."

He snorted. "Yes, I do. We're a tiny firm in a nowhere market with no big names on our team. The shortlist is what we get. Which, considering that only around 3 percent of all submissions make it that far, doesn't suck." He paused, then said, "And now I'm going to have to explain to Theodore all over again why we can't expand. Fuck."

**Brian's POV**

I didn't go back to sleep after Justin called. I showered and went into the office, where I was sitting serenely with a latte and my laptop when Cynthia, Ted, and the entire creative team from the Pittsburgh campaign came streaming in, all in various stages of hysteria.

Getting on the shortlist for a Clio was a little inside baseball for most of my friends and clients, but, despite the undoubted accuracy of my prediction that we wouldn't win, this was a very big deal for Kinnetik in terms of our profile in the industry. 

" _Ad Age_ wants an interview," Cynthia said, not even trying to hide the fact that she was gloating. "So does _Pittsburgh Magazine_." She gave an evil smile. "And Gardner Vance called."

"I bet he did," I said, closing my laptop. "I'm guessing he's regretting the day he ever heard the words 'non-compete clause.'"

Gardner wasn't the only one with regrets. A little after lunch, Cynthia came in and said Richard Bohling had called for an appointment.

I laughed. "I should have seen that coming."

"What do you want me to tell him?"

I shrugged. "Tell him to come on down. Everyone else is."

She buzzed me around 3 that he was there, and after keeping him waiting for a few minutes, I had her bring him in.

I didn't stand up. He didn't offer his hand, just sat down in the chair across from mine. He didn't waste any time, I'll give him that.

"Brian, I admit I screwed up about Babylon."

I let my fingers drum on the desk while I looked at him. "Well, we agree on that."

He took a breath. "You said once that if I had wanted to buy the club, the right way to have done it would have been to make an offer. I'm ready to do that, if you'd be willing to consider it."

That's what I'd expected him to say. "I don't know, Richard. I put a lot of money into the upgrades, the advertising campaign. And we've been doing well. _Very_ well, as I'm sure you wouldn't be here today if you didn't know."

Richard smiled. "It's a much larger offer than it would have been last year." He hesitated. "And there's more to it than Babylon."

I nodded. "The buildings next to it?"

"Of course. But that's not all."

I raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"I want you to take over my ad accounts again." 

I started to say something, and he held up his hand. "Hear me out. Not just the clubs and restaurant in New York. Not just my clubs here. My family's company, too."

Now that, I wasn't expecting. His family's firm was the largest privately held financial institution on the East Coast. They represented a toehold in an industry Kinnetik had never been involved with. And they were founded by one of the Pittsburgh's oldest families, which made them a perfect fit for Kinnetik's current direction.

Richard seemed to realize I was surprised. "My lawyer will send the proposal to your lawyer. Just look it over."

I stood up. "I will, but..."

"Don't worry," he said, also standing. "It's not a contingency deal. If you really won't sell Babylon, we can still do the rest."

That made it twice in one appointment Richard Bohling had surprised me.

Later that night, I recounted the whole thing to Michael while we ate chicken a la salmonella at the diner. 

"You can't let him win, after what he did," Michael said, unfortunately while also chewing his food. 

"The vast amounts of cash he'd pour into Kinnetik's coffers would more than compensate me for anything Richard did to Babylon," I said.

He swallowed. "Not what he did to Babylon. What he did to Rage."

I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Are you and Justin ever going to forget about that?"

"No." He took another mouthful. "Never."

I held up my cup for Betty. "Well, as long as the check has enough zeros on it, Mikey, I'll somehow find it in my heart to forgive him."

"Are you seriously considering selling Babylon?" 

I shook my head. "I don't think so. But if I can get his business, and more importantly, his family's business, without selling the club, why not?"

"Because he's a low-life, evil, soul-sucking scumbag who would stab you in the back in an alley and then go out dancing?"

I shrugged. "Welcome to my world. You just described most of my clients."

"Not all of them. Not Remson."

I stood up. "You say that because he saved Ben's ass. Believe me, Remson can stab backs with the best of them, when it's in his interest. Getting Ben into that study cost him nothing, and it meant I owed him."

Justin, having benefited from my years of tutelage on life's harsh realities, thought I should take him back as a client at a substantial increase in our fee, and keep the club. I was leaning in that direction myself, although the thought of being able to go out dancing without mentally tallying the bar total for the night had its appeal.

"The only thing is, I can't imagine you not owning Babylon," he said when we talked on the phone that night. 

"Someone else owned Babylon for years before I bought it," I said. "And frankly, between Gary Sapperstein and Richard Bohling, I'll take Richard. At least his checks won't bounce."

**Justin's POV**

Brian ended up being right (I could hear him add, "as usual" to my thought). The "Like Steel" ad didn't win the Clio. "And trust me, Justin," he'd told me the next day when I called to commiserate, "the food they served at that banquet wasn't even up to Pittsburgh's standards of haute cuisine. If this is the pinnacle of the advertising industry, I'm going to have to consider changing professions."

There was just under three weeks between then and the day he came to London for the show, most of which Brian, my mom, and Brian's attorneys spent negotiating with Richard Bohling's team, and I painted.

I painted at night, all day, and on the weekend. It reminded me of when I first met Brian, how it seemed like every minute we weren't fucking was just a waste of time. I didn't want to enjoy my last days in the UK, didn't want to take advantage of proximity and go to Paris again, even resented the time I had to take to eat and sleep.

One night I looked around my studio, and had to laugh. There was paint everywhere – on the walls, the floors, the table. If the ceilings weren't so high, there'd have been paint there, too.

I cleaned my tools, put my paints away, and stood in the middle of the room, looking at the canvases on the wall.

The next day, I put every single piece I was considering for the show – the manipulated images, the abstracts, the new pieces – and sat on my worktable with my legs crossed, and just looked at them. 

After a while I got up, pulled around half of them out, and set them against the wall near the door. Then I went back to sitting and staring and thinking.

It took me a week, but by the deadline in the last week of May, I had my selections: Three of the new pieces, four abstracts, and five of the smaller manipulated images.

It was ridiculous to still be selecting pieces for a show that was happening in a few weeks, of course. Then again, everything about how the Reynaud Trust approached its mission of promoting the arts was unconventional, not just the fact that they left it entirely up to their resident artists to select their own work at what was basically the last minute. I liked it; it reminded me of art school.

I had professional photographs done of the pieces for the show, and a few others, and uploaded the images to my online storage site. I sent an email to Brian and Virginia, letting them know they were there. For the Trust I had slides made; that's what they wanted, so that's what we did.

I had three days to pack up the rest of the pieces to ship home, clear out the studio, and wait for Brian to get there for the opening. 

**Brian's POV**

The night before I left for London, I stopped by Lindsay's office at the gallery. She sat at her desk using my laptop, scrolling through the images Justin had sent me. I was flipping through some pretentious art magazine on the low table in front of her very uncomfortable but exquisitely designed sofa.

She stood up, carrying the laptop, and sat next to me on the sofa. "He's gone further in the last year than most artists go in a lifetime."

I nodded. "He's doing all right."

She ignored that. "I wish I could see these in person..."

I reached out a finger and killed the display. "He'd love it if you were at the show." 

She just shook her head. "I can't think of a way to make it work."

"If it's the money..."

"That's not it." She looked at me, her head slightly tipped, a few blonde strands escaping from the knot at her nape. "I have a show opening here the week after that, and Melanie is taking JR to visit her mother, so I need to be here for Gus." 

"Christ," I said, shutting the laptop cover and stuffing it into my briefcase. "What about spontaneity? What about art? What about..."

"Responsibility? Family obligations? Career commitments?" She was smiling at me indulgently, like a mother whose child just told her he was going to be an astronaut when he grew up. "Every choice we make means other choices we're not making. You can't have everything."

"I can," I told her. "Justin can."

She looked at me for a long time, then said. "Maybe. But I learned to accept a few of life's limitations the last time Mel and I split up. I wish I still was the kind of person who'd throw on her Prada pumps and fly off for an art opening in Europe whenever she felt like it, but that's not my life. And I'm okay with that."

I started to sag against her, then fell across her lap, arm thrown back over my head, looking up at her. "Fuck, Lindsay, let's both just kill ourselves now."

"What, and make Gus an orphan?" she said, laughing, and pushed me off her lap onto the floor.

When I got to London, Justin was happy, relaxed, horny, and disturbingly discolored with paint, some of it in very unlikely places.

"The back of your knee?" I said, scrubbing harshly at the offending joint while we tried to share his pathetic shower. "Were you painting without pants on?"

He twisted around and tried to look. "I probably did that with my hand."

I'd gone to the exhibit hall with him, and watched while they hung his work to his very precise specifications. I was theoretically there to share my expert advice on all things hung, but he didn't need my help.

I walked to the back where his friend Shen was painting an already-white archway an even starker shade of white. A woman with a pony tail was across the space on a ladder, doing the same thing to the walls. Three spheres, covered with a clouded glaze in a color that would have been blue if there'd been more of it, were lined up so that when you approached that end of the hall, you saw the smaller framed by the larger behind it. Only when you got closer did they resolve into three spheres, and only when you looked at them from the side instead of head-on did you realize how perfect, how precise, the entire installation was.

Justin had walked up next to me. "He's the only one here who everyone will hear of someday," he said quietly.

"And you," I corrected him.

"No," he said. "And I'm not being modest. People interested in art may know my work and my name. But he's at another level."

"I'm not arguing about his talent," I said, putting my arm across his shoulders. "I'm just reserving the right to disagree about yours."

We walked back so I could see his pieces in their final positions. The room was full of the sound of hammers and shouted directions about moving lights and paintings and pieces of sculpture.

I stood the longest in front of the painting he'd done of the wall at Kinnetik while the annex was still being renovated. "I thought you weren't going to paint this." 

Justin looked at it for a minute. "I didn't think I was." He paused. "I didn't think I could."

"Obviously, you were wrong," I said dryly, since it was one of the most breathtakingly aggressive pieces he'd ever created. He'd explained to me how he'd finally managed to get the almost architectural control he needed to make it work, but since knowing it was created with a screwdriver or whatever the fuck he'd used didn't make it any more or less beautiful, I'd tuned it out.

The next night there was some kind of pre-opening bash where the Trust did their schmoozing thing with the regents from the Institute and a hand-picked preview audience. 

I'd been surprised when Justin told me the artists weren't invited. "The Reynaud Trust doesn't think the rules apply to them," he'd said, which was both understandable and fine with me, since I'd had enough of self-congratulatory banquets for the year.

So the night before the opening, we fucked, then waited for Jennifer's plane to get in so we could all have dinner.

"I'm so proud of you, Justin," she said, her hand over his on the table in the hotel restaurant. "But I bet you're glad to be coming home."

He smiled. "You have no idea," was all he said, but his hand squeezed my thigh. I hid my smile in my wine glass.

Justin was still asleep when I woke up the next morning, proving that we had transcended mundane restrictions like time zones. I saw his eyes flutter when I started the coffee, and when I came out of the bathroom he was sitting at the tiny table, booting up his laptop with one cup in front of him and another on the counter for me.

I used his laptop to check my email while he showered, and when he came out, I looked at him. "Tell me, just as a matter of curiosity. You have a Google alert on Kinnetik, right?"

He was pouring another cup of coffee, and turned and looked at me. "Yes..."

"And I presume you have one on my name?"

He looked at me over the edge of his mug, and nodded.

"But not on your own name?"

"On my name?" he repeated.

I turned the laptop to face him, and he folded one leg under him while he sat on the chair and read the screen.

After a minute he said, "What the fuck is this?"

"It's the New York Times Art Scene blog," I said. "It's a review of the Reynaud Trust preview."

He kept reading, and then he stood up. "I can't." He walked a few steps and sank into the sagging loveseat.

I turned the screen toward me again. "Taylor's work has always had a certain carnality… blah blah, ArtForum, young age, tragic past, blah blah… maturing as an artist…" I read a few words ahead, and paused.

"What?" He looked strained.

I read slowly. "His work was before simply evocative. Now, it has become transformative."

He shoved his hand through his hair. "What the fuck does that mean?"

I ignored him. "The work he's done during his months with the Reynaud Trust is infused with a mastery of form not often achieved by abstract artists with even twice his experience. His past work owed much of its impact to its rigidity of outline without an excess of detail. But in the works exhibited now, that outline has clearly been exploded, all its modern and historical guts spilled on the canvas in what could easily have become chaos and instead become not order, but purpose."

I walked over to the loveseat, and looked down at him. "I'm not sure, but I think he liked it."

Justin stared up at me. "Yeah."

I pulled him to his feet. "Take it like a man, Sunshine. He thinks you're a genius." I frowned. "You aren't receiving this information with the quality of joy I'd have anticipated."

"I just…"

He was looking into my eyes, and I knew what he was thinking. Of course I knew. "It's all right," I told him, and pulled him close. 

He took a deep breath. "I know."

"You did it."

I felt him nod against my chest, but he didn't say anything. We just stood like that for a long time.

The rest of the day was packing and his phone ringing, and answering congratulatory emails coming in from the ten thousand Pittsburghians to whom Michael had obviously forwarded the review after I sent him a highly confidential advance copy. A review I doubt most of them could even understand, although Lindsay's tearful congratulatory call demonstrated that she, at least, certainly did.

After I finally got him off the phone with Daphne – a call mostly consisting on his end of “I know! And then…” – we left our packed bags at his flat, and walked to the gallery. I remembered the streets around the school when they were full of dirty snow, and I was following Justin to the kiosk on the corner, in search of coffee. I remembered the first time I'd visited him there, when we'd barely left the flat at all.

I grabbed his hand and squeezed it, and he looked at me sideways, smiling.

Jennifer was already there, with Virginia. They met us at the door, and Virginia said, "Justin. It's your night. I hope you're ready to enjoy it."

He kissed her cheek. "Thanks for everything, Virginia."

She turned and gave me a small smile, and I nodded and smiled in return. "No need to thank me for letting the lad go pursue his dream while I kept the home fires burning…"

Virginia smiled politely, but Justin laughed. "While Emmett and the housekeeping staff kept the home fires burning and you ran up four figure phone sex bills, you mean?"

I nodded benignly and put my arm across his shoulders, ignoring Jennifer's laughter. "Exactly." Then I gave him a gentle shove towards the hovering crowds. "Go network. Your mother and I need a drink."

**Justin's POV**

I skipped the networking and went and looked at Shen's installation. He was standing off to the side with his translator, obviously being interviewed. Caroline was watching from a few yards away; I went over to her. "Why does he still use the translator?"

She shrugged. "Just feels more comfortable that way. He hates being interviewed."

When he was done, he walked over to us. "That should be the last for a while."

We wandered around looking at everything, and ended up in front of my paintings. 

I looked at Shen as he gazed at one of my architectural pieces. "What do you do next?"

He took a glass of wine from a passing waiter's tray. "I have a show next year in San Francisco," he said. 

"I'll be there," I promised.

"What about you, Justin?" Caroline asked.

"Virginia wants my next show to be at her gallery in New York," I said. "October of next year."

Shen smiled at me. "I'll be there," he said quietly.

It was his and Caro's last night together, so they left early. I talked with Jense and Mark for a while, and then went looking for Brian and my mother.

Before I found them, the reporter who'd been interviewing Shen pulled me away.

I answered his questions patiently, or as patiently as possible considering he had nothing new to ask, and then started drifting toward the bar.

I heard someone say my name. It was noisy, and I thought it was my mom, but when I turned around, it was Kalli.

I stared for a minute. She didn't move, just looked nervous and said, "I'm such a fucking asshole..."

I shook my head. I could feel myself smiling. "It's okay. Forget it." 

She started to say something else, but I wouldn't let her, just dragged her over to Brian, who was standing near the front door examining a sculpture with an acquisitive expression on his face.

He lifted his eyebrow when he saw us. "What a surprise."

I looked at him. "Did you...?"

He shook his head. "No, I stayed out of this one. It was between you two youngsters to work out your issues." 

"No," she said. "I just realized I was being..."

"A fucking asshole. I know. Shut up."

Brian snatched a wine glass off the tray of a passing waiter. "Well, I suggest whatever brought you two back together, that you go look at the lad's art, which he's been wanting you to do for, oh, six months now." He lifted his glass. "Cheers." And then he walked away.

We stood there looking at each other. "Did Armand send you, or...?"

She shook her head, and gestured at her jeans. "Do I look like I'm here on business?" She hesitated. "Besides, I quit the gallery."

I stared at her. "Since when?"

"Four months ago." She was quiet for a minute. "I'm working at that gallery in Brooklyn where I had my last show." And then she said, defiantly, "And I'm painting again."

I felt a huge smile on my face. "Good."

She smiled back. "Well, we'll see." Then she glanced around. "Point me to your stuff, then leave me alone while I look at it."

It was a good thing there was food at the opening, or I'd have been falling-down drunk by the time Kalli found me two hours later. 

"Okay, clearly you're not an idiot and you realize those architectural pieces are brilliant."

I nodded cautiously. There seemed to be a "but" in there I was suddenly a little worried about.

"Those image manipulations – that's Stockholm?"

"Yes... but they didn't really work the way I wanted..."

She put her hand on my arm. "I can see that, but Justin, you almost did it. You almost manipulated pure light into those fucking prints."

"I was thinking," I said slowly, "of trying to blow up the images, edit them, and then reduce them. I mean, I tried it, but the effect was too..."

She was nodding her head. "You've never had the patience to really do it a fucking pixel at a time, but you..."

She stopped talking, and grinned at me. "I need one of those," she said, pointing at my glass of wine.

She had more than one, and so did I. She ended up heading off with the hottest of the waiters – well, the hottest straight one – to check out the London clubs. My mom was flying to France to meet up with some friends from her real estate agency in the morning, so we put her in a cab. 

After we watched her drive off, Brian grabbed my phone out of my pocket and checked the time. "We have less than two hours until the car gets here."

I groaned. "Fucking red eye. Why did we think that was a good idea?"

He pulled me against him, and kissed me. "You wanted to get home.

"Oh, yeah." I half-stumbled against him, and then pulled on his hand. "Let's walk back," I said.

"You're drunk," he said, but he followed me anyway. 

A few blocks from the campus it started to rain, and then pour. We ran until we came to a deep doorway, and leaned on the brick wall inside it, panting and watching the rain fall.

"Well," he said, looking down at me, "not quite the romantic moonlit walk I had in mind."

I pulled him in front of me, so his body was pressed against mine. "It was the best night of my life," I said, still a little breathless.

He looked at me for a long time, and his face was strange.

"What?" 

He touched my hair. "You said that once before."

I was confused, and then I wasn't. I let the moment hang there for a long time – too long. And then I couldn't help it; I smiled. "Well, now I've had two."

His face changed, and then he was smiling. He pressed his forehead against mine and said, "And of course, it needs to be noted that I was there for both of them."

"Of course," I agreed. 

He looked out at the rain. "Do you think it's letting up?"

I shook my head.

"Okay," he said. "Let's go." 

We were soaked when we got to the flat. We were stripping off our wet clothes when Brian started backing me toward the bed. I let him push me back and crawl on top of me before I pointed out the sad reality of the situation. "We have less than an hour before the driver gets here."

He nuzzled my neck while reaching for the lube on the bedside table. "We have time."

Yeah," I said, and I felt my breath catch a little. "We do."

**Epilogue: Brian's POV**

We pulled into the garage, and I looked at Justin in the passenger seat. "You're back."

He nodded. "I'm hungry."

I laughed, got out, and grabbed our bags from the back.

Justin went ahead of me into the kitchen, and I pulled our wet clothes out of the plastic bags we'd used to stuff them into our suitcases. I spread them out to dry in the laundry room, and followed him in.

He was standing at the counter eating some nuts that were undoubtedly left over from some soiree or other. 

I nodded at the kitchen table. "I have fond memories of a homecoming fuck on that table. Want to revisit our romantic past?"

He laughed, and I walked over to him and kissed his mouth. It was salty.

He touched my face. "I was thinking upstairs."

I nodded. "Of course. Our tender homecoming union should take place in the marital bed."

I was kissing him when I realized he was pulling away. He grabbed both my hands and said, looking into my eyes, "Actually, I was thinking... the shower."

"Oh, well," I said. "Who am I to argue with that?"

And we ran up the stairs together, laughing.


End file.
